Speak Out For Your Teeth
Your dentist will be able to treat you much better if you let him know about your medical history. After all, he can find out about other diseases too when he is examining your mouth.
For instance, if you are pregnant, then teeth whitening treatment is not for you. But the dentist will not know this unless you tell him, at least in the first trimester. The chemicals used for whitening can prove to be harmful in pregnancy. Similarly, let him know if you are recently detected with diabetes so that he will treat you accordingly.
The key is to be frank with the dentist, isn’t it?
This entry was posted on Friday, May 8th, 2009 at 10:24 pm and is filed under Dental Care. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
December 5th, 2010 at 7:01 am
Nice post. Although, I thought the reason for pregnant women not being able to have their teeth whitened was because of insufficient evidence of the effects of carbamide peroxide on pregnant women, not not due to definitive evidence of this being a damaging substance for pregnant women. Do you have any reference to scientific sources?
January 26th, 2012 at 11:02 pm
It is SO important for people to share quite intimate details about their health status with their dentist: pregnancy, medications, and certain illnesses will often have an impact on what dental treatment is offered, particularly because some adverse effects are very serious indeed. An obvious example is if a patient is taking the blood thinning medication, Warfarin, and requires a tooth extraction. If the dentist is not aware of the patient’s medical history and goes ahead with the extraction, a medical emergency is likely to occur.
The onus is on the dentist to always ask the patient about their current medical status at every appointment: the patient’s role is to answer these questions truthfully and thoroughly. It’s wonderful when a patient is forward-thinking enough to fully-update their dentist about their current medical situation before the dentist even asks!