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Category: Dental
Advice for all ages: Don’t skip the dentist
Earlier this month, a team of researchers from the University of Connecticut and London announced that aggressive treatment of gum disease can improve the function of blood vessel walls in the body, potentially reducing the risk of heart attacks. A few weeks before that, researchers from the Harvard School of Public Health reported a study…
Saliva May Replace Blood as Test for Disease
Within two years, you may be able to go for a regular dental visit, spit into a cup and, before your appointment is over, find out from an analysis of your saliva whether you’re at risk for oral cancer. Currently, dentists have to do a thorough mouth exam to probe for oral cancer, which will…
Oral Cancer Poses Growing Threat
Patrice Di Carlo’s ordeal with oral cancer just might be enough to scare anyone who still chews tobacco or smokes and drinks heavily out of denial forever.Di Carlo, 49, a former smoker who lives in Malden and works as a legal secretary at the Boston lawfirm, Ropes and Gray, discovered what she thought was a…
Unnecessary Dentistry?
He’s 81 now, this former Boston businessman, and when he retired to a southern state some years back, one of the most treasured things he left behind was his friend and dentist of 50 years, Dr. Wallace J. Gardner of Cambridge. In the south, the executive found a new dentist, who proposed a $5000 treatment…
‘Deep pockets’ that nobody wants
It was the “Floss or Die” poster that got to 54-year-old Jack Kelsch of Wareham. Kelsch works as a grants administrator at the Harvard School of Dental Medicine, where the perils of periodontal disease are standard water cooler fare and “deep pockets” means gum disease, not money.But as Kelsch discovered, that poster was no joke….
Dental lasers – are they the safest way to fill your cavity?
They might fix your phobia but are they the safest way to fill your cavity? Until recently, Glenn Gustafson, a 56-year-old Boston man who manages a Weston country club, was your basic dental phobic. It used to take him weeks to make an appointment, says Gustafson, whose fear of needles and drills mirrors that of…
Implants? chew on this first
Last Friday, Ed Pearson, a 45-year-old computer programmer from Charlestown, climbed into the dentist’s chair for what has become almost routine for him: dental implant surgery. At roughly $2,000 per implant, not counting the crown that goes on top, Pearson wasn’t thrilled – who would be? But he was upbeat. The two implants he’s had…
Don’t be afraid of . . . your Dentist
You’d rather face the IRS than the dentist? Relax, there are ways to fight the phobia; Michele DerVartanian, a 25-year-old student in Medford, says she was 10 when she learned to fear the dentist. She had a very sore, abscessed tooth, and “I had to have it pulled immediately,” she recalls. The whole family had…
Fear of aids is no reason to avoid dentist
At 2:30 on a Monday afternoon in the summer of 1989, James Sharpe, a convenience store owner from Northampton, settled back in the dentist’s chair to have three teeth extracted. AIDS was, presumably, the last thing on his mind, and he certainly had no risk factors for the disease.His dentist, Dr. Anthony E. Breglio, was…
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