Originally posted by ItsGavinC
Listen, even you should know that anesthethia affects every system of the body.
So what? Dentists may ask if their patient has any sensitivities to particular anesthetics and switch if necessary.
Does that require knowing IN DETAIL how anesthesia affects every system in the body? I think not. You need to know major classes, mechanisms, and dosages. Thats it.
Please explain to me how a dentist would apply that knowledge to a dental patient.
Why shouldn't I learn about the entire body? I'm going to administer drugs, perhaps that is important. I'm sure that one day you'll have a full understanding of systemic drug complications.
You will NOT be administering across the board drugs of all types and classes. Your scripts will be limited to a handful of items, not the whole pharmacopeia of medicine.
Again, please explain to me why a dentist would need to know how colchicine works and how they would apply that knowledge to a patient?
Neither psychiatrists NOR dentists need that info.
Hepatic and renal dysfunction impair the body's ability to break down and excrete local anesthetic, leading to an increased anesthetic level in the blood (better learn about kidneys and excretion).
So do dentists perform liver function tests? NO. Do they perform ELISA assays to look for autoimmune complications before proceeding? NO. Do they get creatinine clearance levels before administering local anesthetic? NO.
Only OMS people actually apply that knowledge to patients.
Dentists use local anesthetic for 99% of their activities--that hardly warrants studying the effects of drugs on all organs. Sure its nice to know, but it doesnt actually CHANGE anything you do with the patient other than choosing between anesthetics perhaps.
Congestive heart failure decreases liver perfusion and thereby increases the half-lives of amide local anesthetics which increases the risk of overdose (better learn about the cardio system).
So dentists routinely screen for CHF in high risk patients before proceeding? You and I both know they dont.
Anesthetics we use cross the blood-brain barrier and produce CNS depression (better learn neuroanatomy).
Again, the necessary info you need to know is basic mechanism, dosage, and contraindications. You certainly dont need to understand how axonal transport works.
You'd better hope that your dentist understands the body in full and the effects that the drugs he administers or scripts have on your body. You'd better hope your dentist is comfortable performing cricothyrotomy.
How many times (other than OMS settings) has a dentist done a crico? Its a 1 in a million occurrence.
Many situations arise in the dental office, the least of which are patient unconsciousness, respiratory distress, altered consciousness, seizures, chest pain and cardiac arrest.
In an OMS setting, sure. In your typical dentists office? Extremely rare event. Even on the chance that something like that does occur, do they treat the patient in the dentists office? Hell no, they rush them to the ER.
Dentists (other than OMS) dont TREAT those conditions--they refer out to physicians.
You have an inflated view of dentists as if they routinely perform thoracotomies if a patient goes into cardiac arrest. Sorry but thats just not the case.
Non-OMS dentists treat teeth and gums and thats about it. They dont integrate knowledge about the whole health of the patient--they dont ask about psych history or do an H&P workup on dyspnea. They dont order blood work or chem panels. They dont image lungs or heart or brain.
Med students have the POTENTIAL to apply everything thats exposed to them in med school. The same cant be said for dentists. There is no way a dentist will need to know the differential diagnosis for multiple myeloma, or the workup for chronic obstructive pulmonary disease.
Even if dentists are forced to learn the nuances of multiple sclerosis, I challenge you to find ONE dentist thats actually applied that knowledge in treating patients.
How efficient can it be to study things that you are NEVER going to use?
