Dental Exam

Here’s the text with the timestamps removed: Our first visit or new patient exam, we call it, is a longer exam, a longer process than you are used to maybe just to go get your teeth cleaned because we have to find out a lot of things about the patient. They fill out forms with medical histories and things like that before they even arrive at the office. They do that digitally online. When they come to the office, we tell them how long they're going to be here and what we're going to perform. The initial part of that examination process is with the hygienist. Typically, we're going to take X-rays of the teeth. We also do an oral cancer exam on every patient. We palpate the head and neck area to make sure there's no unusual gross or anything like that. Over the years, fortunately, I've only found maybe three or four serious situations, but we're certainly glad that we did find those and have the patients referred for the proper care. Also, we have to evaluate the health of the gums because gum disease is still very prevalent in our society. Not as much as it used to be, fortunately, but gum disease is very important because people lose their teeth with gum disease or their tissue isn't as healthy as it could be, or they have bad taste or bad breath. We have to evaluate the health of the gums, not just clean the teeth and send them on their way. What's really fun to do is we do a video examination, and now the patients can see what I see. Actually, with the video examination, I can see more clearly with the video than I can trying to look in the mouth where it's dark and funny angles and stuff. Now the patient becomes a co-conspirator with how we're diagnosing their mouth. Quite often, I'll have a video on it and they'll say, "What about this, doc, or what about that?" Because now they can see and they become an active participant in their own health. That's exactly what we want, because when they become aware of a situation in their mouth that's not as healthy as it could be, they don't take our word for it, they understand it and they become a better patient and get healthier for it. Our new patient is very thorough, and patients tell us that all the time, that they appreciate the time and commitment that we put forth when they first come in.