The Explorer Winter 2018 Explorer Winter 2018 | Page 5

TEETH CARE ON THE GO: MOBILE DENTISTS,
HYGIENISTS TRAVEL TO YOUR DOOR
By Claudia Buch, Sacramento Bee
Prefer to see your dentist from the
comfort of your La-Z-Boy? It can be
done.
A growing number of dental
professionals will come to you if you
can’t make it to their offices. They show
up for appointments at patients’ homes
or residential care facilities, packing
lightweight X-ray equipment, portable
drills and battery-powered examining
tools that let them gently handle on-
the-go cleaning and treating of teeth.
Some see patients with physical or
mental disabilities, including
agoraphobia and autism. But they
primarily treat independent seniors
living in residential care facilities who
just find it easier to have their dental
care delivered to their door.
On a recent morning at Mistywood, a
senior living complex in Roseville, Dr.
Dave Kanas was seeing his first patient
of the day, a man who’d been bothered
by a loose tooth and a partial denture
that needed adjusting. Kanas and his
patient, Harry “Buzz” Harrison, joked
and bantered like old friends.
Kanas, who retired from regular
dentistry seven years ago, snapped on
blue dental gloves and a mask, opened
his portable dental kit – improvised
from a fishing tackle box – and got to
work. He did a thorough exam of
Harrison’s mouth, using a fiber-optic
light with a disposable mirror. Picking
up a portable X-ray machine, he shot
and developed a black-and-white image
of Buzz’s loose tooth – in 50 seconds.
Finally, he adjusted Harrison’s partial
denture, made of a new flexible plastic,
to make it more comfortable.
Harrison, wearing blue jeans and a
Los Angeles Dental Society Explorer
California football jersey, never had to
leave his green recliner.
“I’d be lost without him,” said Harrison,
a lively octogenarian who’s lived four
years in his studio apartment. Without a
mobile dentist, “I’d have to drive to an
appointment, and you don’t want me
driving,” chuckled the 81-year-old
retired high school teacher.
“The worst thing to
see is an elderly
person with $5,000
worth of crowns and
bridges, but their
gums are bleeding
and infe cted. They
end up losing all
that expensive
dental work
because nobody is
brushing or flossing
their teeth,”
“If (patients) can go to their dentists, I
encourage that,” said Kanas, an Auburn
resident who bought a Prius last year
because he averages 400 miles a week
driving to see patients from Sacramento
to Grass Valley. “Mobile dentistry takes
over when they can’t go anymore,”
primarily for medical or age-related
reasons.
Like replacing a missing tooth, mobile
dentistry fills a niche.
“Research shows about 30 percent of
the population experiences barriers to
(dental) care, which include
transportation, geography, education,
language and economics,” said Alicia
Malaby, spokeswoman for the
Sacramento-based California Dental
Association, in an email. “Mobile dental
visits eliminate a barrier, allowing
patients to obtain care and helping them
maintain good oral health.”
The CDA doesn’t track how many of its
licensed dentists are mobile
practitioners. But the California Dental
Hygienists’ Association oversees a
licensed class of hygienists who are
allowed to work independently of
dentists and do mobile teeth cleaning.
That category of hygienists has nearly
quintupled in the last decade, from 112
licenses in 2005 to 540 this year.
Especially for older patients, there’s a
real need to bring dentistry to their
bedside. “In some cases, we are the only
dental entity patients see,” said CDHA
past president Karine Strickland, who
has a mobile hygienist practice based in
Santa Cruz.
One of California’s pioneers for mobile
hygienists is Sacramentan Judy Boothby,
who was instrumental in getting state
legislation passed in 1998, creating a
new license for a Registered Dental
Hygienist in Alternative Practice,
known as RDHAPs. She holds the
state’s license No. 1.