Did you know that teeth contain stem cells that could help protect your family’s future health?

Stem cells help the body renew and repair itself.  When people hear “stem cells” they often think “embryonic stem cells”, but there are also adult stem cells.  For decades, doctors have quietly been using these noncontroversial adult stem cells from bone marrow or umbilical cord blood to treat diseases such as leukemia, and over 500,000 families have privately stored their child’s umbilical cord blood for its potential medical uses in the future.

It turns out that there are also potent stem cells that live in the dental pulp (the meaty tissue inside teeth) and the periodontal ligament (the layer of tissue that keeps the tooth attached to the jaw bone).  Scientists have called these stem cells “dental stem cells”.  Although they are found in or around teeth, these “dental stem cells” have the potential to be useful for a wide range of regenerative dental and medical applications.

The story of these stem cells from teeth goes back to a curious scientist at the National Institutes of Health (NIH).  In 2000, Dr. Songtao Shi was researching stem cells from bone marrow.  One day when his daughter was losing her baby teeth, he rushed one into his lab and found similar ‘mesenchymal’ stem cells inside.

Over the past 10 years, scientists and doctors have investigated many uses for dental stem cells such as for regenerating bone, repairing or building new teeth, and treating a number of serious conditions such as type 1 diabetes, spinal cord injury, muscular dystrophy, stroke and myocardial infarction (heart attack), repairing corneal damage, and treating neurological diseases like Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s.

In 2009, dental stem cells were used successfully to regenerate jaw bone in the clinic and to treat periodontal disease.  In 2011, scientists showed that dental stem cells can create islet cells, similar to those in the pancreas, which produce insulin in response to glucose levels – suggesting that dental stem cells may someday play a role in treating type 1 diabetes.

Why preserve stem cells from teeth?

Dental stem cells are easy, convenient and affordable to collect – since stem cells can be harvested from any healthy tooth.   We all lose 20 baby teeth from about age 7 to 12, then many of us have teeth pulled for braces, and our wisdom teeth extracted when we reach our late teens or early adulthood.  So we ask, is there a better use for teeth that come out than to put under the pillow for the Tooth Fairy?  Yes, the stem cells inside may hold the promise for a range of very interesting potential uses in the future.

The American Association of Pediatric Dentistry issued a policy statement on dental stem cells in 2008, in which they acknowledge the potential utility of these cells, as long as they are properly collected and stored.  The AAPD recommends that dentists stay abreast of new developments in stem cell science, that they inform their patients about the potential for regenerative dental and medical applications using dental stem cells, and that they work with quality providers of stem cell preservation services to ensure that stem cells are properly collected, transported, tested, processed and cryopreserved.

Family Dental Associates of KY, PSC  offers Store-A-Tooth^TM, the leader in dental stem cell banking. 

Store-A-Tooth offers a second chance for parents to store their children’s stem cells in a simple, convenient and affordable way.  Banking dental stem cells now could help protect your family’s future health. You’ll be prepared to take advantage of future breakthroughs in stem cell research and ‘regenerative medicine’ – which may provide new treatments for conditions such as diabetes, spinal cord injury or Parkinson’s.

“In only 10 years, we’ve seen research into dental stem cells grow exponentially.  Our mission is to help educate families about dental stem cells, especially those that may be affected by serious diseases such as type 1 diabetes or muscular dystrophy.  We want parents to know that it’s relatively easy and affordable to preserve the stem cells in their children’s teeth and that these cells hold the potential to be used in a number of future applications,” said Dr. Peter Verlander, Chief Scientific Officer of Provia Laboratories.  Dr. Verlander left his post at Harvard Partners Center for Genetics and Genomics to help launch Provia Labs, which provides the Store-A-Tooth service.

Before baby teeth come out or wisdom teeth are extracted, please take a moment to learn more about dental stem cell banking to see if this service is something you want to do for your family. To Learn more call us at 502-969-2396, email us at info@fdadentist.com  or just stop by the office. We are at your service.

Lesion Detection Light

Your dentist could save your life.

Oral cancer is now claiming a life every hour of every day.  Sexually-transmitted Human Pappilloma  Virus (HPV) is now the leading cause of oral cancer in much younger populations and the numbers are rising at an alarming rate.  Researchers at Ohio State University and the National Cancer Institute recently reported that if this trend continues the number of HPV-related oral cancers will surpass cervical cancers in the United States within the next ten years.

Women can get HPV-related oral cancer.  However, men have the greatest risk of developing it and the rate of incidence has increased some 28% since the late 1980′s.

Early Stage One Oral Cancer

Most oral cancers are discovered in the late stages when the lesions become visible to the naked eye or are palpable.  The five year survival rate is a mere 30%.  However, when discovered in early stage one the survival rate approaches 90%.

At Family Dental Associates of KY, PSC (FDA), we are using a lesion detection light as part of the oral cancer screening process.  Lesion detection lights can spot suspicious lesions that may be precancerous or cancerous before they are visible under normal light or large enough to palpate.  The lesion detection light uses a specific wavelength of light that causes normal tissue to fluoresce a bright apple green color.  Abnormal tissues do not fluoresce and appear black.

The photo above was taken two weeks ago on a white male in his late twenties.  The dark circular area on his hard palate, as seen through the lesion detection light, was not visible under normal light.  A biopsy was performed.  The pathologist said that it was an early stage one carcinoma.  We may have saved this young man’s life.

The oral cancer screening examination is simple, non-invasive, painless and only takes a couple of minutes to perform.  We recommend such screenings at least once a year for those 18 and older.  The lesion detection light also helps discover several other types of oral diseases, including lichen planus, fungal infections and other infectious diseases.  These conditions, while much less serious, need to be diagnosed and treated in a timely fashion too.

The Oral Cancer Foundation has an informative video on You Tube at:  http://youtu.be/JJY2ynlXoKA.

Single Tooth Anesthesia (STA) numbs only the tooth and surrounding gum tissue.  We have been using the STA for a couple of years now at Family Dental Associates of KY, PSC. We like it and our patients love it.

The STA machine is a computer controlled syringe that “drips” the local anesthetic between the tooth and the gum.  It takes about two minutes to administer, there is little or no discomfort and the tooth is numb immediately.  You do not have to sit in the chair for twenty minutes waiting for the anesthetic to take effect.  Pretty darn impressive!

If you would like more information, give us a call at 502-969-2396 or email us at info@fdadentist.com.

Air abrasion uses fine silica particles under air pressure to prepare teeth for fillings.  There is no drilling, so there is no vibration or heat build-up.  The velocity, intensity and density of the particle beam is adjustable, so that there is minimal loss of healthy tooth structure and the tooth rarely needs to be numbed.  The fillings done with air abrasion are very conservative and maintain maximum tooth strength.

Air abrasion cannot be used in all situations.  It will not remove old metal fillings nor large deep cavities.  It is best suited to new small cavities in the grooves on the biting surfaces of the back teeth and cavities in between or on the edges of the front teeth.  It is also very useful when small to medium-sized tooth-colored fillings need replacement or repair.

You can watch a video at http://youtu.be/Dntaxz7yNAw.

For more information or to see if you might be a candidate; give us a call at 502-969-2396 or email us at info@FDAdentist.com.

This is not normal.  I advised Mary that these lesions may never heal as she may have BRONJ (bisphosphate-related osteonecrosis of the jaw).  Bisphosphates are a class of drugs used to treat osteoporosis and malignant bone metastases.  Their use has been dramatically increasing over the past few years.  I am sure you have all seen Sally Field’s commercials.

Bisphophonate therapy may cause exposed and necrotic bone that is isolated to the jaw.  This complication usually presents itself following simple dental surgical procedures and can have  terrible adverse effects on the patient’s quality of life.  There are case reports in the literature of people losing significant portions of their jaws, even the entire lower jaw, due to BRONJ.

Several risk factors have been identified as potential risk factors for developing BRONJ:

*  A history of trauma to the jaw bone.

*  The length of time on the drug.

*  The type of drug.

*  How the drug is administered.

The most consistent risk factors are recent tooth extraction and a history of IV administered bisphosphates.  Patients with gum disease and oral abscesses are seven times more likely to develop BRONJ.

Mary told me that she is having a bone scan the following week and will see her oncologist thereafter.  I suggest that he should examine her mouth to rule out a metastatic tumor.  She is to stay on the antibiotics and do warm salt water rinses until I see her again.

The oncologist called a couple of weeks later and said it was not a metastatic tumor.  I contacted Mary’s primary physician to inform her that I suspected Mary had BRONJ and had read that hyperbaric oxygen therapy had shown promise in treating cases like Mary’s.  She said she would refer her.

The following week Mary returned to the office.  She said it still hurt, but not terribly, and wanted to continue with making the upper denture.  She said she could not have the hyperbaric oxygen treatments because Medicaid would not cover the $50,000.00 cost.  She told me her life wasn’t worth $50,000.00 and all she wanted was  “to eat a good meal before she dies”.  We both cried.

Mary is a 59 year old in poor health with a history of stage four rectal cancer, smokes a pack of cigarettes a day, has a plate in her neck, is on a blood thinner, and has had annual Reclast injections over the past several years for osteoporosis.  She has about half of her teeth remaining and half of them are grossly decayed with numerous abscesses.  Mary is also indigent.  I will treat her pro-Bono.

Mary’s remaining upper teeth are decayed beyond repair as are two of her lower molars.  All are scheduled to be extracted and an upper denture is to be fabricated.  The plan is to make Mary an upper immediate denture.  This means we will extract the back teeth first, let those sites heal, make the upper denture and then extract the front teeth and put the denture in that day.  This way Mary won’t have to be seen in public without any teeth.

Mary returned.   I extracted all of her upper back teeth and the two lower molars leaving the upper front six teeth.  The surgery was uneventful and Mary was re-appointed in a week to have her sutures removed and given prescriptions for an analgesic and an antibiotic.

A week later, here comes Mary.  I removed the sutures and noted two areas where the bone was exposed.  One area, on the upper right, was about the size of a dime and one area, on the lower right, was about the size of a pea.  Mary said that these areas hurt bad.  This isn’t a rare occurrence; often smokers heal slowly, have poor clot formation, and develop “dry sockets”.  Mary was given home care instructions,refills for her prescriptions and re-appointed in two weeks to begin making the immediate denture.

Mary came back in a week.  The pain is worse in her lower jaw.