SRUTI
ASURVEY of dental needs conducted in a random sample of 100 rental patients showed that up to 60 per cent were found to have oral symptoms that were positivel;y traced to their kinery troubles, more than 40 per cent needed extensive dental treatments and majority of these patients were not aware of the possible complications of dental neglect. Well, statistics apart, if the fact that renal diseases have specific

oral effects is realised, then it becomes easier to tackle both predicaments.

Pre-operative dental considerations:
Dental treatment carries, no more risk for a patient with renal disease than for a normal person, if certain precautions are followed.

Give your dentist a thorough history of your rental problem along with details about the physician who is handling your case. They dentist will first check with him regarding your daily/alternate day therapy of oral steroids and other drugs, the antibiotic regimen and so on, and then treat you accordingly.

Get a complete blood picture done. This will alert you on abnormalities (if any) particularly in bleeding/clotting times and thereby associated complications like bleedings from gums, hemorrhagic lesions and the like can be evaded

For patients undergoing dialysis, extractions and other oral surgeries are scheduled early in the dialysis cycle to ensure optimal correction of hydration, urea nitrogen, creatinine and coagulation defects.

For patients about to undergo transplantation, potential sources of infection are eliminated in the preperative stage. Routine dental treatment is deferred and as most transplant is deferred and as most transplant patients are ambulatory, their dental needs are services on an outpatient basis.

The author is dental surgeon and can be contacted at ALL SMILES DENTAL CLINIC, 26673439, 9845085290.