CDE: [Center for Persons with Disabilities Presentation Series] ft. Edward L. Perlow, DDS, FAGD

Presented virtually via Zoom Webinar

Time: 5:30-7:00 pm EST; This virtual lecture will begin promptly at 5:30 pm via Zoom Webinar.
Registration: FREE; Registration is still required.
CE Credits: 1.5 lecture credits
**NOTE: For the best viewing experience, use the Google Chrome browser or download the Zoom app.

Dental Care for Special Needs Patients. They Deserve Our Very Best!!

Course Description

Dental personnel will gain a deeper understanding of what constitutes a “special needs” patient. Approaches to treatment when a patient’s medical history presents challenges to coordinating effective and safely delivered dental therapy will be discussed. As dental professionals, we should understand the barriers to care and who has erected those barriers. Where are these “special” patients located and how does it affect their care. One will understand the difference between informed consent, a legal right, and consent. We will contrast historic and contemporary approaches to restorative treatment for challenging patients.

There continues to be a significant disparity between the diverse special needs population and available comprehensive dental services. Access to routine dental treatment is generally limited to several regional hospital dental services and ambulatory centers where the delay prior to receiving routine dental treatment can be as long as year. There is a significant and life-long need for dental services in this population who frequently live in group homes, or with aging parents, and have difficulty maintaining adequate oral hygiene. Clinicians are commonly met with challenges when attempting to accommodate special needs patients; patient scheduling frequently involves support staff with limited hours, inadequate scheduled chair time, and limits of patient cooperation in the operatory. Sedation and anesthesia services may be utilized not only to provide various levels of behavior modification but also enable comprehensive and often reconstructive dental services in these growing populations. Ambulatory office anesthesia services are available to dentists and surgeons which converts the dental office to an operating room by utilizing multimodal monitors, ultra-short anesthetics, and where possible portable anesthesia machines which facilitate rapid, same day, return to the patient’s residence, limited disruption in the patient’s daily routines, and eliminate any need for physical restraint during treatment.

Learning Objectives

• Exposure to techniques that help caring for different special needs populations.
  
• Understand home care as a powerful tool to help improve dental health.
  
• We will identify instruments and supplies that are helpful with unique populations.
  
• See how to change and improve the environment to maximize success.
  
• Review the current definitions of Sedation and General Anesthesia and recent updates to NYS Dept. of Education sedation requirements.
  
• Review special needs populations who are and are not suitable for office-based anesthesia services.
  
• Understand the preparatory pathway to accommodating this population
  
• Recognize the training, skills, and equipment required for an anesthesia team to provide safe office anesthesia.
  
• An overview of the ambulatory anesthesia management for this population that involves the anesthesia team, the dentist’s staff, family and group home personnel.

Speaker