Iris Publishers Journal of Dentistry & Oral Health

  Online Journal of Dentistry & Oral Health would like to say Happy Thanksgiving Day to you and your family.

  Authored by  Bruce Howard DMD, Opinion You have an infected gash on your foot, and although it may not hurt so badly that you can’t walk on it, you go to the ER. It’s red and swollen, pus sometimes comes out, and it smells bad. Your shoe won’t fit. Does the doctor examine it and say “we should debride it, put you on antibiotics and check healing in a week to make sure it doesn’t spread to the rest of your body and cause potentially lifethreatening infection”, or does s/he recommend this treatment and then say “or we could watch it and if it causes destruction of your soft tissues and eats away at your bones, possibly infecting other organs and cause heart attack, or kidney failure, or diabetes, then address the problem”? Do you reply “I only want to do what my insurance covers”, or do you comply with the doctor who has kept current on the latest research and explains the link between oral hygiene and diseases such as diabetes and stroke, called oral systemic health? Do you w...