Periodontics

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 2^nd generation,Dr. Lane and Dr. Berrin have retired leading me to the 3^rd 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.

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.  

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 3^rd 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.