I
had the unique experience the other day of having a meeting with the periodontal
group that we do most of our referrals with. Capitol Periodontal Group came by the
office for a meet and greet. Most of the senior members of that group which I have
been working with for the last 40 years have retired. Dr. Angel, Dr. Roberts,
Dr. Hogan were some of the original owners. The 2nd
generation,Dr. Lane and Dr. Berrin have retired leading me to the 3rd
generation of seniors in the practice. Dr. Towfighi and Dr. Pretel. I had not had
the opportunity to meet several of the younger members of their group (the 4th generation), so Dr. Towfighi
said he would bring over some of the members to my office for lunch. I was
shocked when everyone came. There was a group of 10 of us all sitting around
talking about the differences of the new procedures in Periodontics. One of the
topics was the new LANAP procedure which stands for Laser Assisted New Attachment Procedure. They reviewed the procedure with me and as one of the comments that
I heard was that it is the “Holy Grail of periodontics” because it actually allows
new bone to generate and new gum tissue to generate around infected and periodontally diseased teeth. This puts into question one of my periodontal instructors at UCLA, Dr. Takie, whose favorite phrase was “you show more or have
them no more” which means that you did gum tissue reduction to eliminate
periodontal pockets in order to save your teeth. That process can lead to substantial issues
associated with post-op sensitivity and additional decay problems. The new LANAP
procedure however allows patients to avoid all these issues. This is obviously
a new procedure it has only recently received FDA approval in 2015 and so it
will be interesting to see how valuable this process is. The reason that I am
mentioning all this is we have a large number of patients that I think can
benefit from this process and so don’t be surprised if you hear our hygienist
mention it. Hopefully it will truly become the “holy grail” and we will be able to
save a lot more teeth.
Thursday, September 29, 2016
Thursday, September 15, 2016
Government Regulations
In my mind, there
is no question that government continues to intrude on our lives more and more.
Whenever we have a new patient come into the office, because of government rules, we have to electronically
sign all the different forms that the government requires us to have. These are
primarily part of HIPAA, the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act. And although it may seem like a pain in the neck, they are the government's way
of protecting us from ourselves. Often times I will have patient's comment to me
about the number of forms they have to sign and I relate to them that it is similar
to buying a car or buying a house or signing that crazy contract with Apple
when they are upgrading our software. These are forms that are drawn up by a team of attorneys you never really want to read, but it is probably better for you if you do. In our particular
situation when the patients get a little frustrated in signing the forms my
comment to them is usually the same, “the government will protect you
from everything ill that will ever happen to you,. All you have to do is sign
away all of your rights and give them all your money.” That is meant as a joke, but the way things are going it really seems like there may be a lot of truth
in saying that. It certainly will be interesting to see how our next presidential election works
out in November. It will definitely give us some indication as to the direction that we are
heading in our country. In my opinion, hopefully government does not get any more intrusive
than it already is. By the way, having reached Medicare age I'm wondering how I managed to survive so long.
Thursday, September 1, 2016
Stress Test
One
of the best aspects of aging is that you see life in different perspectives over a period of years.
After doing dentistry for 40 years I have certainly seen a lot of interesting things
that primarily has brought me great joy. However, getting old comes with a
cost. One of those costs, interesting enough is having your wife yell at you
about getting a cardiac stress test done. You know that when you go to the doctor and they
put you on a treadmill and increase the speed and inclination to get your heart
rate up to see the overall condition of your heart. I got the pleasure of
participating in a stress test a few weeks ago after having my wife yell at me for a
number of months about it. I went to the doctor’s office the cardiologist
checked my medical vitals before I got started and then she gave me over to
the technician to perform the stress test. There are 7 levels to the stress test
I did get through 5 of them with my heart rate getting up to over 180. When we
were on the 3rd level I noticed that the inclination was starting to
get to me a little bit so I asked the technician if he ever had anyone pass out
while taking the stress test. He indicated that very morning he had a patient
go into cardiac arrest while doing a similar stress test. Fortunately, with the
cardiologist right there the patient did survive but it did certainly make me
wonder about my own mortality and perhaps gave me a little bit more desire to perform
well on the stress test. Interesting enough the technician came in a couple of
days later as a new patient to our office and we were reminiscing about my
adventure at his office. I am anticipating that his adventure in our dental
office will be as much of a success as mine was at his and not like the other guy's. Hopefully I'll see you on my next blog.
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