In Teeth Wisdom, we have compiled a list of helpful articles and resources assembled for professionals and patients looking to educate themselves in different aspects of dental health and oral care. The sources are trustworthy organizations and respected professionals who provide consistent content about different topics like dental health for older adults, risks, and symptoms of different diseases, but also information about courses and webinars.
We will continue adding more resources for both professionals and patients to this section to help you find the dental-related information you were looking for.
Table of Contents
Patient Education
Once you have assessed your patient’s needs, concerns, readiness to learn, preferences, support, and possible barriers to learning, you will need to:
- Make a plan with your patient and his or her support person
- Agree with the patient on realistic learning objectives
- Select resources that fit the patient
By 2060, according to the US Census, the number of US adults aged 65 years or older is expected to reach 98 million, 24% of the overall population.1 Older Americans with the poorest oral health tend to be those who are economically disadvantaged, lack insurance, and are members of racial and ethnic minorities.
Spending the right amount of time engaged in appropriate home oral care is undoubtedly essential to helping minimize the risk of caries and periodontal disease. An individual who visits the dentist twice a year for an oral exam and dental prophylaxis will spend approximately two hours per year in the dental chair.
If you get migraines, one thing’s certain: You want to find a way to stop them. While you feel a migraine in your head, one cause may reside in your mouth and jaw.
Are you being treated with chemotherapy for cancer? If so, this booklet can help you. While chemotherapy helps treat cancer, it can also cause other things to happen in your body called side effects. Some of these problems affect the mouth and could cause you to delay or stop treatment.
The National Institute of Dental and Craniofacial Research has created various informational pages and documents to educate both patients and caregivers about the effects of diverse diseases on oral health, how to prevent cavities or how to floss and brush your teeth properly, among other topics.
Too much glucose, also called sugar, in your blood from diabetes can cause pain, infection, and other problems in your mouth. Your mouth includes:
- your teeth
- your gums
- your jaw
- tissues such as your tongue, the roof and bottom of your mouth, and the inside of your cheeks
The IPPF offers Patient Education Series Webinars featuring leading pemphigus and pemphigoid physicians and scientists. These free webinars are a friendly and casual environment to learn more about specific disease topics.
Oral diseases and conditions that are associated with aging concomitantly result in an increased need for preventive, restorative, and periodontal dental care. This is particularly true of seniors aged 65 years and older who are economically disadvantaged, who are members of racial/ethnic minority groups, and who are institutionalized, disabled, or homebound.
For many people, going to the dentist is an unpleasant but manageable experience. For others, just the thought of going to the dentist causes severe anxiety, leading them to delay or avoid dental treatment. Unfortunately, this behavior can spiral into a vicious cycle of dental pain, health problems, worse anxiety, and more complex and costly dental procedures.
Almost everyone experiences bad breath once in a while. But for some people, bad breath is a daily problem, and they struggle to find a solution. Approximately 30% of the population complains of some sort of bad breath. Halitosis (Latin for “bad breath”) often occurs after a garlicky meal or in the morning after waking.
Periodontitis is a severe form of gingivitis, in which the inflammation of the gums extends to the supporting structures of the tooth.
Recommendations for antibiotic prophylaxis prior to certain dental procedures have existed historically for two groups of patients:
- those with heart conditions that may predispose them to infective endocarditis; and
- those who have a prosthetic joint(s) and may be at risk for developing hematogenous infections at the site of the prosthetic.
Other Resources for Health Professionals
The CDC supports state and territorial health departments and national partner organizations through cooperative agreement programs. Under the State Actions to Improve Oral Health Outcomes (DP-1810), CDC funds 20 state health departments to assist their efforts to decrease dental caries, oral health disparities, and other chronic diseases co-morbid with poor oral health.
Employers have responsibilities for the occupational safety of their employees. The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) is the U.S. governmental agency within the Department of Labor that has the mission to assure the safety and health of America’s workers by setting and enforcing standards; providing training, outreach, and education; establishing partnerships; and encouraging continual improvement in workplace safety and health.
The human population throughout the world is aging rapidly, and will require the adoption of new modes of dental practice to address the special needs of this demographic. These are some of the reflections of my decade of providing mobile dentistry to geriatric patients.
Every year, families across the United States make the difficult decision to place their elderly loved ones in nursing homes and extended care facilities. Seniors make the move into long-term care facilities due to deteriorating health and the need for assistance, care and support.
Stay up to date on critical policy knowledge from HPI about the U.S. dental care system.
As the popularity and diversity of social media platforms increases so does their utility for health research. Using social media for recruitment into clinical studies and/or delivering health behavior interventions may increase reach to a broader audience. However, evidence supporting the efficacy of these approaches is limited, and key questions remain with respect to optimal benchmarks, intervention development and methodology, participant engagement, informed consent, privacy, and data management.
Here you will find a lot of data and statistics about, for example, dental pain or oral cancer by age.
The Water Fluoridation Reporting System (WFRS) is an online tool that helps states manage the quality of their water fluoridation programs. WFRS information is also the basis for national surveillance reports that describe the percentage of the U.S. population on community water systems who receive optimally fluoridated drinking water. The system was developed by CDC in partnership with the Association of State and Territorial Dental Directors (ASTDD).
The CDC develops evidence-based recommendations to guide infection prevention and control practices in all settings in which dental treatment is provided.
As governments worldwide are under pressure to integrate new demographic trends into policy-making, especially in health, the Oral Health for an Ageing Population (OHAP) project seeks to establish the fundamental role of oral health professionals in healthy longevity. It also aims to study opportunities for improved oral disease prevention and treatment of elderly patients whilst actively raising awareness of the need to conduct research on oral health in ageing populations.
