What is the role of your dentist?

Your dentist and the dentist’s team play an important role as part of the cancer management team. Radiation treatment that involvse the head and neck make healing after some dental procedures a problem. In other instances chemotherapy may make dental scaling, extractions or other invasive procedures difficult to deliver in a safe way. You can help your dentist by always keeping them up to date with respect to your current medications, current or recent chemotherapy, and presence of any intravenous medical devices such as portocaths or indwelling venous lines. If you can bring your blood counts with you to your visit that is helpful.

Your dentist can help you be taking periodic dental x-rays to look for infection that may not be detectable using other methods, by scheduling more frequent dental recall and cleaning examinations, fixing any problems when they are small and remaining vigilant in helping you to comply with important aspects of home care such as topical fluoride in head and neck cancer patients that have had radiation. Generally you will be followed for a period of time after treatment but your dental care will likely be handed off to your family dentist for long-term care.