Interview with Tamara Garrett DDS

Dr. McGlennen: How are you utilizing OraRisk® COVID-19 PCR testing in your practice? What has been the team response? Tamara Garrett DDS: When my office had to close on March 20th for the COVID pandemic, I was in a complete state of shock. My practice is a second home to me, and my patients and staff are my extended family. I knew I could not stay in a stupor for long and had to put on my “boss” hat to come up with a strategy. I spent hours learning from ZOOM dental seminars, reading j...
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3 Pillars of Protection in the COVID 19 Pandemic

Flashback: Friday the 13th of March 2020, COVID-19 is sweeping the globe – sickness, death, and economic destruction in its pathway. Educated and concerned dental professionals are stopped in their tracks with little scientific guidance as to how COVID-19 will impact the industry. Anxiously, we wait. The media bombards us with horrific accounts of how the virus has perplexed and overwhelmed the medical community. Fear-ridden, we wait. Dentistry is flooded with webinars, best practice protoco...
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Reduce Dental Benefit Hassles and Help Your Patients Say “YES”

  Wouldn’t it be great if you never had to deal with a denied claim again? One way to help prevent these hassles is by having more diagnostic information from the beginning! The quantitative results that you receive in a salivary diagnostics report gives you a measurable overview of a patient’s bacterial profile as well as risk level—both of which provide crucial evidence for your best chance at insurance coverage. (You’ll also have a great baseline from which you can assess the effi...
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Take Control & Sense of Security

As your dental practice opens its doors, answering questions of safety can be one of the many stressors on your mind. This blog will highlight ways to help take control and provide a sense of security. For example, during the mandated shut down dental practices were diligently working, securing limited personal protective equipment (PPE), and studying the ever-changing guidelines. Obtaining the appropriate PPE and conducting necessary training is one way of taking control and providing a sen...
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AAOSH has been saving lives since 2010! Who is AAOSH?

The American Academy for Oral Systemic Health (AAOSH) began in 2010 with the primary goal of uniting dentistry and medicine in treating the body as a whole. Fast forward 10 years later, we are still focused on that original target and the paths have wonderfully broadened to not just dentistry, but all allied health fields - chiropractic, integrated medicine, naturopathic medicine, functional medicine, osteopathic medicine, advanced practice nursing, life science coaching, and so many more! ...
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Connecting the Mouth and the Brain Through Bacteria

There are many diseases that people never want to hear they have. Cancer is a gut-wrenching diagnosis and with it comes images of enduring chemotherapy and/or radiation. For many decades having cancer meant a probable death. Medicine has come a long way in cancer treatment and many who receive treatments become survivors. In addition to better survival rates from certain types of cancer, deaths from heart disease and stroke have also been reduced in recent years. One diagnosis that has no...
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COVID-19: A Primer for the Dental Professional, Part 2

Tools for the Dental Professional: Testing for SARS-CoV-2 In response to the pandemic, the community of laboratories from across the globe have worked to develop new tests to diagnose COVID-19 and to identify persons who have successfully survived the infection.  There are then 2 types of tests for these two conditions. To diagnose COVID-19 a sample of nasal or oral secretions are collected to look for viral RNA, evidence of the presence of SARS-CoV-2 in that person.  In short, laborat...
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COVID-19: A Primer for the Dental Professional Part 1

The pandemic caused by the virus, SARS-CoV-2, has descended upon us with a speed and seriousness unprecedented in our modern history. The virus causing the disease called COVID-19 has been revealed to be both stealthy as well as terribly dramatic. The virus and the disease have taken not only the health and lives of many in our country, but also, in the effort to stem the pandemic, our economy as well. As we look forward to an ebb in the number of newly afflicted persons, it is important to ...
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A Progressive Oral Wellness Center in Rural America

In our rural practice (McCreight Progressive Dentistry) in Northwest Colorado, we see periodontal disease on average in about one of every two patients, or around 46%. This is representative of the CDC statistic as posted in the May 2015 Journal of Periodontology. Whenever we read these statistics, we are puzzled. In an industrialized nation where home care tools and dental technologies are readily available, how can there be so much disease? Here are some measures (newer technologies) we ha...
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Communication is Key

Periodontal disease is one of the most prevalent chronic inflammatory diseases in the United States and it is a key indicator of other systemic diseases.  Dentistry has a significant role in reducing the impact of chronic disease in patients who trust their dental teams to guide them to total body health.  From the first call and through every step of the patient experience, such as reviewing the medical history, the conversation should include the oral systemic connection. Dental teams a...
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