Well, yesterday was a lot of words about how an orthodontic practice can reopen after the Covid Lockdown restrictions are lifted in Phase 1. (Phase 1 restriction lifting allows dentistry - which is good, because a lot of people need to get to their dentist now)
Here's the same idea in diagram form!
After a busy day of orthodontic treatments, I was in the practice one evening doing some treatment planning for the patients that would be coming in later that week and the phone rang with Prof Stassen’s name on the screen.
As he does the jaw surgery and other special procedures for my patients that need them, I’d always take the call when I get it because it usually means something needs to be discussed in detail and I’ll have to make special appointments and the quicker I know what I have to do the quicker I can help my patients. In this case it was “remember ...
I have blogged about mouth cancer before. We had mouth cancer screening days in the practice, there was a national mouth cancer awareness day.
It’s not one of the more famous ones, there isn’t a national campaign where we wear a ribbon or a flower or have a coffee morning at work for it, but it’s certainly there in the background messing around with people’s lives. Before I was an orthodontist I used to work at the junior levels of various oral surgery departments around Northern Ireland and England and saw many patients receive treatment for it. Those patients were referred to us from one source ...
It’s a given fact among orthodontists that every child should have an orthodontic examination by the age of 7. This is to look for healthy development of teeth, their positions in the developing mouth and the way they relate to each other. Some problems might be obvious but some are lurking unseen by parents - and the kids themselves - and require someone with an appropriate mix of experience and knowledge to detect or investigate.
Why bother so young?
The idea is that if you detect certain problems there are simple interventions (we’d call that interceptive orthodontic treatment) that might avoid a more serious problem developing, one ...