DENTISTRY
Article reprinted with permission of DVM360 - Aug, 04 2017
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The ABCs of Veterinary
Dentistry:
"K" is for Kick Starting Your
Dental Practice
We're almost halfway through the alphabet. It's time for a pep
talk on the absolute good dental care does for your patients.
By Jan Bellows, DVM, DAVDC, DABVP, FAVD
DVM360 MAGAZINE
Nearly eight of 10 of the dogs and cats you see daily
need dental care, yet a much smaller percentage re-
ceive it. How can you kick start dentistry as a domain
within your practice and realize the good that it pro-
vides for your patients, their owners and your prac-
tice?
1. Believe in dentistry
2. Invest in the best education, materials and equipment
3. Perform a great exam
4. Prevent the preventable and treat the treatable.
Believe in dentistry
Not everyone likes running, biking or lifting weights,
but we all believe it’s good for us. The same is true
of dentistry—you don’t have to like or even love it. All
that's required to move forward is to believe in its ben-
efits. The long-term benefit of periodontal care and
after care is relieving inflammation. Human dentists
are convinced that much damage to our bodies arises
from periodontal disease inflammation, why should it
be different for companion animals?
We have all seen older dogs and cats with fractured
teeth and advanced periodontal diseases that appear
to be eating well and thriving. Do these patients really
need immediate dental care? Yes, they really need it.
Dogs and cats have similar oral pain pathways as peo-
ple. Dental disease hurts—even if it’s chronic persistent
dull pain. Imagine if you walked around with inflamed
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bleeding gums or if it hurt every time you chewed on
one side.
No animal should be left to silently suffer. Proactive
dental care and home preventive measures to prevent
recurrence can eliminate the discomfort (Figures 1A
and 1B). Rejoice in the smiles on your clients’ faces
exclaiming they have a “new” dog or cat after com-
prehensive dental examination and care for pathology
discovered.
Invest in Dental Education, the Best Materials and
Dental Equipment
There is no greater rate of return in your veterinary
practice then dentistry. To do it right you need to
know how to diagnose, treat (or refer) dental patholo-
gy you see and have the best equipment and materials
to do the job right.
Education
Most veterinarians receive only minutes or a few hours
of dental training during veterinary school. But all is
not lost. Great resources abound for teaching what
we missed.
Tackling dental education as a whole can be daunt-
ing. Spending time understanding each of the subspe-
cialties (intraoral radiology, periodontal diseases, oral
surgery, oral medicine, endodontics, orthodontics,
and oral trauma), cutting “dentistry” into bite-sized