Clinical Dentistry: Should Dental Professionals Practice Botox & Dermal Fillers?

 

Clinical Dentistry: Should Dental Professionals Practice Botox & Dermal Fillers?

A lot is being talked and argued about the administration of Botox by dental professionals in India. Many dentists believe that Botox and Dermal fillers belong to dermatology and dentists should not perform these procedures; which is actually a misconception. This misbelief is because not many dentists in India are aware of the significant benefits that Botox has as an adjunct therapy in many dental procedures.

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Use of Botox in dentistry is relatively a new discovery, so probably its acceptance will take some time among Indian dental professionals. If you are a dentist practicing in India and have the same misconception then this blog is for you. I am hopeful that after reading this article your false impression will fade away to some extent.

 

The first thing that I want all the dentists to realize is that we are part of the medical sphere and we dentists are “real doctors.” Every time when we inject LA into a patient, we are delivering a medicinal agent into the human body that has real systemic complications. The only difference is; we have received special training and mastered to deliver local anesthetic into the human body and are comfortable in dealing with the complications. By the way, I would like share a fact that the adverse reactions and complications associated with the LA that we use every day in our dental practice are far more serious than those with Botox and Dermal fillers.

 

 

After training hundreds of dentists in India; I can say that, with proper training on Botox & Dermal fillers even you can become equally comfortable in administration of Botox like you are with local anesthetic. In fact I believe that we dentists can do it better in relation to other medical professionals when it comes to head-neck-face region as we are specialized in it.

 

Here are some dental treatments where you can use Botox & Dermal fillers:

 

1. Temporo Mandibular Joint Disorder

2. Bruxism

3. Facial Pain

4. Gummy Smile

5. Full Mouth Rehabilitation

6. Smile Designing

 

All the problems that I have mentioned above fall in the realm of dentistry and dentist. I believe, no other medical professional can do justice to such dental originated problems except a dentist. So let's not take these issues as a profession and stop letting politics get in the way of science & common sense. If you still feel that Botox and Dermal fillers are not for dentists then you seriously need to re-think!!!

 

I will share some of the cases that I have treated with Botox and Dermal Fillers in my upcoming blog posts.

Source : DentistFriend

Facts & Myths About Use Of Botulinum Toxin in Dentistry!

 

Facts & Myths About Use Of Botulinum Toxin in Dentistry!

In my previous blog post we discussed about dental treatments that are possible with botox and dermal fillers. If you are convinced with the fact that Dental professionals should practice botox and dermal fillers then continue reading this post where I am going to give you further information about botulinum toxin.

 

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What is botulinum toxin?

 

Botulinum toxin is produced by gram-positive anaerobic bacteria Clostridium Botulinum. Botox is a trade name used by Allergen for Botulinum toxin and basically it is a purified form of botulinum toxin which has both aesthetic and therapeutic uses. The trade name Botox has become so popular that people recognize trade name better than its actual name; just like we use the trade name Xerox for photocopy. Many of us get afraid to hear the word toxin but botulinum has the real role to play in dental treatments. It is the toxin that helps to age gracefully.

 

Are there any variants of Botulinum Toxin?

 

Yes, there are seven type of botulinum toxins which are available to us. It is from type A, B, C, D, E, F & G. The one which is used most commonly is type A; however if any individual gets resistant to type A then we can use type B botulinum toxin. The type B botulinum Toxin is known as Myoblock.

Botulinum Toxin is available to us from different pharmaceutical companies.  There are several other trade names of botulinum Toxin like Desport, Neuronox and there are many more apart from Botox.

 

How Botulinum Toxin works?

 

Botox has its action on the muscle; it acts on SNAP 25 and doesn't let the muscle contract. It takes around 1.5-2 hours to bind to the nerve and it can take anywhere between 2 to 10 days to show full clinical effect. The effect of botox last from 3 months to 6 months varying individual to individual.

 

Some common Myths & Facts about Botulinum Toxin

 

Myth: It is new and not tested.

 

Fact: Botulinum toxin has a history of more than 20 years. And there are thousands of research papers available on the same.

 

Myth: It will give us botulism or else I will loose sensations and will have a plastic face.

Fact: None of it is correct. The lethal dose of botox is 2500 units to 3000 units which is 25 to 30 vials which is a lot of money to kill someone. A 100 unit vial of botulinum Toxin costs somewhere between Rs.18,000- Rs.20,000 INR

 

What do I have to know for getting good results from botulinum toxin?

For getting good results from botox injection one needs to understand the anatomy of the face or the areas where they want to inject botox.

Source : DentistFriend

How To Grow Your Dental Practice With Blogging?

 

How To Grow Your Dental Practice With Blogging?

In this technology driven world people prefer to get more information about the product or service before availing them. In fact many of you also do a research about specifications of dental gadgets before buying them or simply try to get more information about mentors or course highlights before joining any dental workshop. You look for resources from where you can find the information, either you try to read an article or watch the video and depending on what you read or saw you make a decision. Friends, just like us, the patients also do their research; they look for information before opting dental treatments.

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Now think what can happen if you become that source of information, the chances are that you will be the dentist of choice for all those people checking out the stuff you shared.

 

Let’s understand how you can become a source of information?

 

Friends, it’s very easy, you just have to understand what your prospective patients must be looking for

Once you figure that out, you can provide them information in multiple ways for example a video, audio, blog or info graphics however blogging remains the easiest.

What is a blog or blogging?

A blog is simply a platform where you can write and publish your articles that can also have images in it. There are several blogging platforms like wordpress.com or blogspot .com that you can use and most of them are free of cost but I recommend blogspot.com as it is a Google owned entity and has better search results on the search engine.

How to create a blogger account?

All you have to do is visit www.blogspot.com and sign up to create a profile that’s it. Once you are done, you can choose a layout and start publishing your posts.

 

Want to know more about How to write blogs for your dental practice? Read On...

Source : DentistFriend

The Impact Of COVID-19 on Dental Practices!

 

The Impact Of COVID-19 on Dental Practices!

In December 2019, a viral infection spread in China named novel coronavirus (COVID-19) or the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-COV-2). This infection rapidly spread throughout the world and become COVID pandemic. The first case in the United States was noticed in January 2020 and presently (May 2021) has resulted in 32,933,337 cases and 586,793 deaths. (www.cdc.gov). Currently, India is facing similar situation how it was in the United States in 2020 and some lessons can be learned from the USA that can help Indian dentists too.

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The effect of pandemic has also seen in dental practices across the nation. At the beginning of the first wave of COVID-19, approximately 198,000 dentists and dental specialists in the USA have to shut down their practices. The reason for the closure was the nature of the work performed in the dental care settings because dentistry is the field where physicians or other staff members have to work closely with the patient especially with the close proximity to the oropharynx and nasopharynx. The virus that causes COVID-19, SARS-CoV-2 is present in the nasopharynx and salivary secretions of the oropharynx. The unique nature of dental interventions involves the usage of various equipment that are known for aerosol production, such as high-speed handpieces, bone drilling equipment, and cavitron. These aerosolized SARS-CoV-2 particles can stay in the air for several hours and can cause the transmission of infection from an infected person to a normal person. Such a work environment is a high risk for the dental personnel teams and for patients for being infected with COVID.

New face of Challenges for dental practices

The pandemic changed the challenges for dental practices such as obtaining dental supplies, maintaining patient’s routine dental visits, financial sustainability, retention of employees, and patient safety challenges. Usually in dental practices, standard universal precautions applied to minimize the spread of infection but to minimize the COVID-19 infection, new strategies need to be implied. This is because the majority of COVID infected patients remain asymptomatic due to the long incubation time period of the virus (2-14 days) and can spread the infection without being aware of it. That’s why regular and daily screening of dental staff members and patients is necessary to ensure that they are neither asymptomatic nor being in contact with COVID patient or have travel history in the past 14 days.

Need of new strategies to spread awareness

 Various strategies have been implemented by dentists to continue attending to their patients and keep their businesses open. Various guidelines have been issued by various healthcare associations, to help dentists to practice dentistry and addressed the needs of their patients while minimizing the risk of transmission of disease. However, there is still a need to spread awareness, especially for the dentists or dental healthcare workers who are working in remote areas, about how to update their work field to continue providing services to their patients or community. The ensuing recommendations can be followed:

• Triage patients before treatment, record temperature or any other COVID associated symptom, patient history of any contact with COVID patient or traveled outside the USA in last 15 days.
• The use of double barriers for intra-oral X-ray sensors are recommended or if possible, perform extra-oral radiographs are recommended.
• Wear PPE kits and change them regularly after every patient.

• Hand hygiene that includes the washing of hands with soap for 20-30 seconds and use of hand sanitizer with the strength of 70% alcohol is recommended.
• The use of pre-operative mouth rinse of patients by either using 0.5-1% hydrogen peroxide or 0.2% povidone iodine solution, to reduce the risk of spread of microorganisms during dental treatment.
• Avoid aerosol-producing equipments and use of hand equipment is encouraged. If possible, try to schedule an appointment for aerosol-producing treatments at the end of the day.
• Medical grade high efficiency particulate air (HEPA) filtration system along with high emergency ultraviolet light units or panels can also be installed. This system is known for 99.995% filtration rate and units can kill live bacteria or aerosolized bacteria trapped in the filter.
• Negative pressure rooms or airborne infection isolation rooms can limit the spread of airborne infection to one room. These rooms can suck out 30-40% of air and ensure a one-way flow of air.
• Include tele-dentistry to offer various services such as to provide urgent care services or follow-up services.
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Lessons Learned from pandemic

Various lessons can be learned from this pandemic, that can help the dental care professionals to be prepared for any future crisis such as, analyze the practice operations which will help improve the financial and clinical performance. By improving the quality of work, focusing on reporting, performance indicators and benchmarking, cost-effective strategies can be implemented. By removing the financial barriers and improving the access to care can also help both patients as well as dentists. By providing phase treatment and breaking up the expensive treatment plans into series of smaller installments, incorporating technology such as tele-dental visits, offering competitive fees, affordable payment plans or collaborating with insurance companies can help solve these issues.  As of now, with every passing day, more people are getting vaccinated. It is expected that once we will be able to fight this pandemic, likewise other business, dental practices will also be able to open and see their patients as they do before COVID.

 

References: COVID Data Tracker. (2020). Retrieved 24 May 2021, from https://covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker/#datatracker-home

Source : DentistFriend