Surveys of adult patients in the waiting rooms of UK and Ontario dental practices show that almost half are age 50+. That means that 1 in 4 patients are women entering or experiencing menopause. In the current issue of the Australian Dental Journal, a study shows that women in menopause produce significantly less saliva when … Read more
Counseling the patient on eating habits and smoking are standard procedures for managing adult dental decay. Or at least they should be. A recent Swedish study reports that older patients did not receive the same level of counselling on eating or smoking, as younger patients (Chart 1) (Chart 2). Chart 1 Source: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23230808 Chart 2 … Read more
In a recent crowdsourcing of ideas to improve the American healthcare system, The Regenstrief Institute, an informatics and healthcare research foundation affiliated with the Indiana University School of Medicine, found that affordability was top of mind and prevention versus treatment was the most common path to affordability. How does this canvas of ideas and opinion … Read more
Dental research has customarily focused on another anxiety – the fear of the needle and the drill. We know, for example from the 2009 Adult Dental Health Survey in the UK, that 1 in 3 adults sitting in the waiting room are anxious about dental procedures. But surely, in the context of The Atlantic’s survey, … Read more
This blog is about dental care, a not insignificant part of the economy. Dental care claims between 5% and 7% of total healthcare spending, and its major disease, dental decay, ranks amongst the most expensive diseases to treat. One can argue that America spends more on restoring diseased teeth than it spends on treating cancer. … Read more