Oral Health

Dental

Click Date to read brief description	Click Short Title to read column
03/19/07	Advice for all ages: Don't skip the dentist
05/31/05	Saliva May Replace Blood as Test for Disease
10/08/02	Oral Cancer Poses Growing Threat
10/23/01	Unnecessary Dentistry?
11/09/98	'Deep pockets' that nobody wants
01/19/98	Dental lasers - are they the safest way to fill your cavity?
11/10/97	Implants? chew on this first
07/01/96	Don't be afraid of the Dentist . . . there are ways to fight your phobia
02/12/96	Fear of aids is no reason to avoid dentist

Earlier this month, a team of researchers from the University of Connecticut and London announced that aggressive treatment of gum disease can improve the function of blood vessel walls in the body, potentially reducing the risk of heart attacks. A few weeks before that, researchers from the Harvard School of Public Health reported a study of more than 51,000 male health professionals, which showed that men who had gum disease, or periodontitis, were far more likely than those without it to get pancreatic cancer.

Within two years, you may be able to go for a regular dental visit, spit into a cup and, before your appointment is over, find out from an analysis of your saliva whether you’re at risk for oral cancer. Currently, dentists have to do a thorough mouth exam to probe for oral cancer, which will strike more than 28,000 Americans and kill more than 7,000.

Patricia Di Carlo, 49, a former smoker who lives in Malden and works as a legal secretary, discovered what she thought was a harmless canker sore on her tongue eight years ago. Her dentist thought it was nothing, too, but it turned out to be oral cancer which just might be enough to scare anyone who still chews tobacco or smokes and drinks heavily out of denial forever.

With the enormous success of fluoridation, dentists now have fewer cavities to fill, which means that, to make a living, some dentists are turning to elective procedures (such as tooth whitening, braces for adults, replacing dark fillings with white ones, extra cleanings, and sometimes-unneeded extraction of wisdom teeth in teens). We explore.

It was the ``Floss or Die'' poster that got to 54-year-old Jack Kelsch of Wareham. Kelsch works as a grants administrator at the Harvard School of Dental Medicine, where the perils of periodontal disease are standard water cooler fare and ``deep pockets'' means gum disease, not money.

Until recently, Glenn Gustafson, a 56-year-old Boston man who manages a Weston country club, was your basic dental phobic. It used to take him weeks to make an appointment, says Gustafson, whose fear of needles and drills mirrors that of 7 to 10 percent of the population. And once he did commit to going, he says, he would be a wreck by the time he got there.

Last Friday, Ed Pearson, a 45-year-old computer programmer from Charlestown, climbed into the dentist's chair for what has become almost routine for him: dental implant surgery. At roughly $2,000 per implant, not counting the crown that goes on top, Pearson wasn't thrilled -- who would be? But he was upbeat. The two implants he's had before caused little pain, except to the wallet, and look good -- ``like having real teeth again.''

Michele DerVartanian , a 25-year-old student in Medford, says she was 10 when she learned to fear the dentist. She had a very sore, abscessed tooth, and ``I had to have it pulled immediately,'' she recalls. The whole family had plane tickets to Florida that they would have had to cancel unless her tooth was treated right away, she says.

At 2:30 on a Monday afternoon in the summer of 1989, James Sharpe, a convenience store owner from Northampton, settled back in the dentist's chair to have three teeth extracted. AIDS was, presumably, the last thing on his mind, and he certainly had no risk factors for the disease.