Check This Out

Check this out. I mean check this out. Last week this woman in her 50's came in with a toothache. She said her tooth was loose. No kidding right. She declined to have it extracted (or plucked out). She was in my chair today. She has some psychiatric issues. Her previous dentist had tried to explain that her teeth had a potential of falling out. I am not sure of her history but her maxillary roots are cut short. There is hardware in here sinus. So I wonder if she had an accident in her early teens due to canine roots being normal but 1st premolars are blunted as are 7-10. Back to mental case. She wanted her teeth clean. She would not allow xrays. We had a pano from 2003 and the teeth looked bad then. The lower anterior teeth are a mess. She is missing 23-24 but no space. Ortho had shifted everything forward. I start probing and I am getting 4-6 mm pockets with 4-9 mm recession. It is crazy. Mobility everywhere! ! ! I know if I clean the wall of calculus on the lower anterior those teeth will fall out. I mean that front one moves when air passes when she talks. I do not know how she eats. Yikes. She was insistent I clean her teeth. She needed SRP. I stayed above the gum line and it was killing me. I did not touch 8-9 or 22-27. It was the worst cleaning I ever did. But hey check out that xray! ! ! Can you believe it?

For all non-dental geeks the xray is of the center top teeth. The nub on the right is the tooth on the left in the patients mouth. The root of that tooth has been destroyed and is no longer in the bone. Nothing is holding that tooth in this woman's head except for gum tissue which is why the tooth moves when she talks. It is like a child who is loosing their front teeth it gets more and more unstable until it falls out.