” and now for something completely different..”

Hi:

After a brief hiatus in sunny Cerritos, Ca. we return to our regularly scheduled programming. This week we are confronted with a tricky situation. Tricky not because the fix is difficult… but until LANAP, there was no fix (but to wait it out) . And, as you will know if either you or a patient has had this condition, it can be brutal during its self-limiting course.

In July of 2007 a 36 year old caucasion male presented upon recommendation of his General practitioner due to severe pain, swelling bleeding and sloughing of the tissues. Not to mention that this gentleman had been febrile and unable to swallow for approximately 4 days. Getting lucky as I sometimes do, he immediately told me that his daughter had been sick with Coxsackie A Virus and it presented exactly the same way..That pretty much confirmed one of the possibilities of the decision tree but left me wondering how to alleviate some of his pain. Note well the suture placed by the previous dentist in a valiant attempt to stop some bleeding due to curettage. Moreover, the first few photos show the depths of the tissue destruction that had taken place in a very rapid time frame.

Traditional therapy for this problem is to scale as much as possible  and place the patient on some sort of “Magic Mouthwash”, in the hopes of palliatively helping until the disease runs its course. Usually in about 14 days time.  In this case, LANAP was performed with the idea that although this was not garden variety periodontitis- at least we could speed up the process. What happened was instead a very pleasant surprise. For everyone.

The final 2 photos are 2 yr post-op and this fellow is not a great hygiene patient. And off we go.

As always, thought’s are appreciated and as I still haven’t received a critical mass who are interested in a lecture , I will keep the idea open until mid -December to see if we get enough attendees.