Gooood mornin'. Today, our email is a little shorter (but much sweeter) than normal. We apologize. There's a good excuse...
After seeing a Massachusetts dentist's new practice promotion, we needed to dust off our Nintendo 64 and hone our Super Smash Bros talent.
Well, after playing 28 hours of video games this week we figured out that our hygienists would be very pissed (and busy) if we tried this out in our office.
Here's what we got for you this week:
- What's that smell? A Visual Compilation of a Comprehensive Review of a Post-Extraction problem. Say that 5 times fast.
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CLINICAL BOOST
Damn You Dry Sockets
Nah, we aren't talking about anchovies.
In this case, we're talkin' dry sockets.
Dry sockets. Alveolar osteitis. Localized osteomyelitis. That pesky post-operative complication that makes your nose hairs burn as soon as it walks through your dental office doors.
“Don't use straws…”
...Shouldn’t be your only post-operative instructions after you take out those tricky mandibular molar teeth.
There is a whole bunch of information about the problem that causes your patients to look at you like, “what did you do to me.”
Everything you need to know…
An “Osteitis” search in the all-knowing PubMed will give you enough information to make your brain swell. So here’s the latest updates that you need to know.
The Keys. (All you visual learners skip this part and go straight to the infographic below??)
- Watch the Mandible. Dry sockets occur 10 times more often in mandibular molars compared to maxillary molars
- Pesky Peri-coronitis. This one is important. It was found that 14.1% of patients with an already existing pericoronitis developed a dry socket (compared to 6.6% without the pericoronitis)
- Helpful and Simple. Current research shows that having your patients rinse with 0.12% Chlorhexidine for 30 seconds prior to the extraction decreases the incidence of osteitis by 50%.
- Summary. Unfortunately, the risk of alveolar osteitis is unavoidable, but factors that increase risk should be recognized. These include: gender, history of smoking, traumatic extractions, and age.
Visual Learners. Start Here
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