Dentistry speaks to Mervyn Druian about the worsening of patients’ oral health due to NHS backlog, and how products such as Ultradex can help improve their oral hygiene routine at home.
Under NHS dentistry reform, patients are visiting surgeries less and less frequently and they’re less able in some cases to visit. What changes are you seeing when those patients do come through to you?
Well, because of the difficulties in the NHS, it’s creating patient apprehension to attend and dentists not seeing as many patients as they saw before. That’s where the biggest problem is.
There are huge difficulties getting appointments, as you can see from the press and even from the local politicians. So, by the time they come to us, things are really complicated.
There might have been just simple decay where you could have gotten away with a filling. Now you’re dealing with a decay that has gone through to the nerve. You’ve got to start dealing with root canal treatments, and that makes it really expensive. Then the patient just wants the tooth out and that’s just on one side from the caries side.
And then you’ve got all the hassles from the government. Whereas before they were seeing a dentist regularly, seeing a hygienist, too – they were monitored and maintained.
Now, the maintenance has gone to pot. We’re getting patients who haven’t seen a dentist or hygienist for three years and it’s quite unpleasant. The gums are inflamed, they’re bleeding. If left, teeth will start to come loose. It’s just a whole cycle of destruction.
Some patients may not necessarily be aware. So, they come in asking for certain treatments, are you finding that you can’t necessarily offer treatments because their oral health is too poor?
Yes, 100% and that’s the problem. Now whatever they need is expensive and complex. They have to pay in time, they have to pay in cost, and they’re not used to that. The majority of people have been getting dentistry on the NHS or paying a supplement.
But it’s nothing compared with what they’re going to pay if they get into the private sector.
The patients you’re seeing now, they’re coming in with different needs, different requirements. What kind of changes are you making at your practice to try and accommodate for that?
The first thing you try and do is get them on a self-maintenance programme to see what they can do themselves. So, you look at their home care – their cleaning, their flossing and those sorts of things that they can do for themselves. Then you look for some things that can aid this.
And this is where I might talk about Ultradex, because Ultradex is a terrific product. It’s a low-abrasion toothpaste and a daily oral rinse and is brilliant for treating gum inflammation. It contains chlorine dioxide, and it really does help lower the level of inflammation and the level of bleeding as well.
As an additive, it’s great for treating patients with bad breath because often, gum disease causes bad breath. And if you get that reduced, even getting rid of the malodour, it’s an improvement.
Those products help before we even do anything. We put them on the regime of rinsing with the daily oral rinse and using the low-abrasion toothpaste and, once they’ve been doing that for a couple of weeks and they come in, things certainly look a little bit better.
And then once you’ve gone through the process, what should other dental care professionals recommend to patients so that they can maintain their oral health a little better between visits?
It depends on the home care. They need to go back to the old-fashioned way of doing things. Brush your teeth in the morning when you get up and at night before you go to bed for at least two minutes.
If you can use an electric toothbrush, that’s even better. If you’re not that dexterous, you’ll still be doing a good job.
And then get them on a regime of using a product like Ultradex. Use the rinse and low-abrasion toothpaste in the morning and again in the evening.
That itself is just a wonderful regime to go on. I personally haven’t used another toothpaste since I introduced Ultradex to the UK about 30 years ago. It’s a brilliant toothpaste and daily rinse, it really is.
For more information about Ultradex, visit ultradex.co.uk.
References
Nielsen, Total Coverage in GB, Value Sales, MAT WE 30 July 2022, Mouthwash and Toothpaste, benchmarked against specialist halitosis brands.
