Patti DiGangi, RDH, BS
Speaker.....Author.....Clinician

Challenging you beyond your routine

 

It’s all Connected: Oral Health & Whole Body Wellness

Oral care practice has changed significantly over the past decades, and oral health professionals’ roles in patients’ overall health maintenance continue to grow in importance. The understanding of oral-systemic health links is also growing, as evidenced by scores of articles in professional journals and the public media. Dental professionals have long been aware of some of the links but with the exponential growth of interest and information in this area, it can be extremely difficult to keep up with the latest literature, let alone to separate well-supported clinical evidence from unsupported hypotheses. This presentation seeks to highlight the latest information on the links between oral health and systemic health conditions. This course will inform the entire dental team on these advances, as well as provide practical information about how these emerging evidence-based connections may affect your practices. Key topics covered include:

• Review the impact of bacteria and inflammation in the oral cavity and throughout the body
• Review and update information about established connections between oral health and systemic conditions
• Examine clinical support for possible emerging links between periodontitis and systemic issues including preterm birth, low birth weight, heart disease, stroke, and osteoporosis
• Learn how to distinguish between different levels of evidence
• Understand the impact of the latest oral-systemic link evidence on the practice of general dentistry and present guidelines for the dental management of patients with systemic comorbidities