Dental Clearance – Who needs it?
Your mouth can harbour a few hundred types of bacteria; some beneficial, others are known to promote tooth decay and gum disease. These harmful types of oral bacteria can enter the bloodstream and travel to organs such as the heart, and cause potentially serious complications.
Dental clearance are not regular dental examinations. There are hidden dental problems you may not suffer from or even notice while you are still healthy and strong. For patients who require cancer treatments, such as chemotherapy, radiation-therapy, transplant or heart surgeries, it is important and crucial to have those hidden dental problems identified and treated ahead of time so that it would not interrupt with the medical treatments.
The idea is to form a team here; the medical doctor will play forward and try to score, while we play defence, and the aim is to have the overall team win the game, which means our patients recover from their illnesses.
Heart surgeries are important life-saving procedures. Those patients are commonly on multiple medicines, and also blood-thinning medications, which means that they may bleed excessively, and we know that bacteria from the mouth can travel to the heart through the bloodstream and destroy the good work of our colleague. So it is important to have clinicians who are familiar with the issues have the hidden dental problems identified and treated ahead of time.
Chemotherapy and radiation-therapy are commonly used for cancer treatments. During and after the chemotherapy or radiation-therapy treatment, the body is less capable of fighting off dental infections. It is our job to identify and eliminate those potential issues ahead of time, so that it would not interrupt with the important cancer treatments.
The pre-surgery dental assessment is conducted by experienced dental specialists who are familiar with the oral implications of medical conditions such as diabetes, cancer and heart disease. You should be able to resume your usual activities on the same day without any interruption.
Specialist Dental Group® Pre-Surgery Dental Assessment Team
Dr Neo Tee Khin, Dental Specialist in Prosthodontics
A/Prof Ansgar Cheng, Dental Specialist in Prosthodontics
Dr Ho Kok Sen, Dental Specialist in Oral & Maxillofacial Surgery
