The essence of the Hippocratic Oath is this statement, and yet the oath is regularly violated due to incompetence and greed. This violation occurs throughout the medical and the pharmaceutical industries much more than you realize. In this article I will limit “doing harm” to my field, which is Temporomandibular Joint Dysfunction, a.k.a. TMD.
One of the greatest shortcomings of medicine and dentistry is labeling symptoms, establishing treatment protocol, and prescribing drugs and procedures, without addressing the many possible attributing factors. This basically leaves the patient out of the picture.
An example could be what is referred to as a trigger point pain. For example, a “tooth ache” really has nothing to do with the tooth but is instead initiated by a muscle spasm transferred to the tooth by a nerve. In my practice I have witnessed patients that have had multiple root canal treatments, followed, when the problem remained, by extraction. In one lecture that I attended by a dental college professor with multiple degrees, all of the patient’s teeth were lost this way and the doctor concluded that the treatment should have been pain relief with drugs instead. I use no drugs in my practice. When the pain is gone, it is because I discovered what caused the pain and treated the cause with only positive side effects and far less financial pain.
Another patient of mine expressed to her dentist that after a prolonged dental procedure, her teeth were not contacting on the left side and she had pain and difficulty chewing food. His solution was muscle relaxants followed by three different appointments of equilibrating the teeth. Her bite was still off, and now her teeth had been permanently altered.
Teeth should not be equilibrated, moved orthodontically, or have root canals (unless there is an obvious need on the x-ray) until the TMD is reduced or resolved. If the TMJ discs have been displaced due to having the mouth open for a long dental procedure under anesthesia for example, adjusting the teeth will not fix the problem. Once the discs are functioning properly again and the patient is asymptomatic, if the teeth still need equilibration or movement, that is the time to do so.
One of the factors preventing doctors from being holistic is that it requires much more understanding of the many fields of the human physiology and requires more time to find the cause. Not finding the cause can result in expensive and unnecessary dental procedures. Unfortunately, some dentists proceed with full mouth reconstruction at a tremendous cost to the patient, assuming that their occlusion was the whole cause of their TMD. If this were the case, everyone with a malocclusion would have TMD.
If you have dental discomfort, before you agree to any treatment, be sure that a proper diagnosis of the cause has been made and that that dentist is qualified to correct it, or that the practitioner knows someone who can. In my experience the finest dentists will not touch a problem that they know someone else could handle more effectively.
At AODTC we specialize in treating sleep apnea and treating TMD, including the symptoms of craniofacial pain, toothaches, headaches/migraines, jaw popping, jaw locking, jaw pain, ear congestion, and more. We don’t perform any additional dental procedures to correct the bite, so you won’t be presented with additional costly treatment proposals. For more information please visit aodtc.com or call 925-837-8048.
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