Early Detection Can Protect Patients.

In 2002, Bruce Paltrow, an acclaimed television and film director and producer, died after suffering for years from complications due to oral cancer. He was 58 years old. After Paltrow’s death, Blythe Danner (an accomplished actress and Paltrow’s wife), partnered with the Oral Cancer Foundation to raise awareness for early screening of the disease. In 2006, Danner told ABC News, “Because [the tumor] was hidden way back in [his]throat, it was hard to detect. [If he had] stage I or stage II, he’d still be with us, I think.” Danner emphasized the need for early detection of oral cancer. She said, “Early detection, prevention, it just has to be out there much more, and it hasn’t been out there in the mainstream media.”
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With the latest technology, guided implant surgery is the new standard to achieve accurate, predictable, and safe implant placement. Using a CT scan and a custom made stent based on the ct scan offers the surgeon the most accurate tool and guide to place the implants.  However, using guides for implant surgery has remained rare.  In 2014, less than 150,000 computer-generated surgical guides were generated, and this number is predicted to increase by two fold by 2019.  In 2012, there were more than 21 million dental implant placements, so utilizing surgical guides is just a tiny fraction of the implant surgery.
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A painful truth about the prescription opioid epidemic is that dental prescribing habits are inadvertently contributing to it. In 2012, healthcare providers wrote an astounding 259 million prescriptions for opioids, such as hydrocodone (eg, Vicodin, Lortab) and oxycodone (eg, OxyContin, Percocet). Dentists are among the leading prescribers of opioid analgesics, and surgical tooth extraction is one of the most frequently performed dental procedures. Opioids are regularly prescribed following this procedure. This may represent an important area of excessive opioid prescribing in the United States. While no one wants to see patients in pain, dentists have to step back and ask if there is a better way to resolve the pain while protecting patients from harm.
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While the importance of advanced in-office treatment options is stressed, it’s essential to address digitally-minded patients’ expectations of out-of-office experiences as well.
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The interactions between patient and professional will always be at the core of dentistry; however, as time progresses and patients become more technologically inclined, they expect more from their dental treatments in terms of in-office experience and out-of-office communications and engagement.
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