You may think it’s no big deal if you undergo a major health change as far as telling your dentist is concerned. But Dr. Bart Kreiner, who runs his own dental practice, Dr. Kreiner Family Dentistry, in Bel Air, Maryland, says it is vitally important to tell your dentist about your health status - mainly to protect yourself.
You should always tell your dentist about a change in your overall health and about any oral medications that you are taking, including vitamins and dietary supplements. We have known forever that a patient’s mouth does not get dropped off at the dentist office like dirty laundry to get picked up later. It is undeniable that medical conditions affect your dental conditions as well.
Recently, the fact that your overall dental health, affects your overall general health has increasingly become public knowledge. There are countless ways for one condition you are currently dealing with to have a major affect on your oral health. Diabetes is just one example of an illness that will increase the severity of your gum disease. Medications prescribed to diabetics tend to cause dry mouth, which increases the severity of gum disease and the decay rate of teeth. So, it is vitally important to let your dentist know if you are diabetic, and the names of the medications you are taking.
Russian Roulette
If you do not disclose an illness to your dentist you are playing Russian roulette. For example, if you have a compromised immune system due to HIV or AIDS, think about what would happen if we pulled five or six teeth out at once, assuming you have never said anything about your condition, and the medications that you are on. The wound that is caused by the extraction of all those teeth at once could cause a bacterial infection that could lead to death.
Being honest with your medical history protects you as the patient more then it does the the medical staff. As a dentist, I am assuming that every patient has a contagious disease that possibly could kill me. This general assumption is what leads me to wear a protective gown, gloves, and goggles during every appointment. It does not matter if you are two years old or 102 , I still maintain the same precautions.
How I treat you to protect myself is not going to change. However, the way in which I treat you to protect you, the patient, could change depending upon the information you provide me. But, I cannot take the steps to ensure your safety unless you are honest about your current and past medical history. For example, if you are aware that you are allergic to penicillin, but fail to tell me, and I give it to you during your appointment, you could quite possibly have an allergic reaction and go into anaphylactic shock. In an instance like that, it is not my fault. Still, the whole thing could have been avoided had you told me about the allergy.
Being honest with your medical history helps you more than it helps me. Truthfully, it just makes my job more complicated when you’re not.
