The seminar was sponsored by the Partners in Complete Health website, who believe that claims that healthy gums can prevent heart attacks and strokes are what prompted the Journal of Periodontology and the American Journal of Cardiology to issue the following recommendations:
Doctors and dentists are warning patients with moderate to severe periodontal disease about the potential risk of cardiovascular disease.
Patients with periodontal disease should have a thorough physical exam and blood pressure check every year.
Patients should be evaluated for diabetes, hypertension, and a family history of premature death from cardiovascular disease.
To reduce the number of bacteria or bacterial load, patients should undergo frequent periodontal cleanings by a dentist or dental hygienist.
Saliva testing is a very useful tool and can be used to tell us if a patient has the type of oral bacteria that can cause severe periodontal disease. That bacteria, combined with high cholesterol levels, can further damage and clog blood vessels, creating an inflammatory load. This can cause further damage, so if you have periodontal disease, your blood vessels can become worse.
If you want to learn more about how saliva testing is performed, check out Oral DNA (OralDNA.org), which has been around for several years. The lab report provides great information that is easy for patients to read and understand, and it lets patients know their levels of bacteria and whether the bacteria is of the destructive type.
Our healthcare system is overburdened and costs continue to rise. It is gratifying to see the medical community realizing that controlling oral bacteria can improve a patient’s overall health. It’s a different way of looking at the disease process. Compared to heart surgery or lifelong diabetes medications, periodontal disease is relatively easy and inexpensive to treat.
We need to welcome new programs and systems that help dental teams connect with the medical world. We need to encourage and support dental hygienists to ask more detailed medical history questions to explore deeper the connections to systemic diseases that patients may have. I was happy to see this “total health model” in the CE course. I hope this mindset spreads and the dental field will become more connected with the medical world.
I believe that one day it will be commonplace in dental offices for dentists to test saliva, prescribe antibiotics for periodontal disease, and consult with cardiologists and endocrinologists. I encourage you to learn all you can about the types of inflammatory diseases and understand how your patients’ oral health impacts their overall health.
Author’s note: Dr. Heather Lucas is national director of Partners in Complete Health. To contact Dr. Lucas, please visit: [email protected]The website is partnersincompletehealth.org. RDH
Janet Whisenhunt, RDH, BS, MEd, PhD, Dr. Whisenhunt is the Dean of Dental Education at Forsyth Technical Community College in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. Dr. Whisenhunt has been teaching the dental hygiene and dental assistant curriculum since 1987. Dr. Whisenhunt cares deeply about his students and has served as the state Student Advisor for nine years and is a past recipient of the Student Advisor of the Year award from the ADHA. Dr. Whisenhunt’s areas of education include oral cancer, ethics, infection control, emergency response, and orofacial anatomy. Dr. Whisenhunt also has a small continuing education business providing CE courses for dental offices and local associations. He can be contacted at [email protected].
