Before an appointment with a Dentist Oahu, residents must complete medical history paperwork, even if they are only at the clinic for a routine exam and professional teeth cleaning. Among other types of information, the form asks about medications or supplements being taken. Some patients think this isn’t important for a practitioner who focuses on the teeth and gums, and they may feel disclosing all this information is an invasion of privacy. A dentist has important reasons for wanting to know which over-the-counter drugs and prescription medications each patient takes as well as any nutritional and herbal supplements.
A primary reason a dentist in Oahu asks this information is to prevent negative effects during dental appointments and complications during or after treatments. Many medications and supplements increase the possibility of excessive bleeding, for example. Someone who takes warfarin or another anticoagulant medication has been thoroughly cautioned by his or her doctor about this issue and will probably not hesitate to tell the dentist. This person may have already experienced an alarming incident due to the anticoagulant drugs, such as continued bleeding from a small skin nick while shaving.
However, a person who routinely takes ibuprofen or aspirin may not realize that increased bleeding is a side effect of these pain-relief medications. In fact, if a patient takes ibuprofen or aspirin before a dental appointment to minimize any potential pain, he or she should tell the hygienist and the dentist about this. Fish oil, which many people take for the beneficial Omega-3 oil content, increases the risk of excessive bleeding. So do the herbal supplements ginger, saw palmetto, Ginkgo biloba, and several others. Especially when having a procedure done that naturally causes bleeding, such as a tooth extraction, the dentist must know which drugs and supplements the patient takes.
People may feel hesitant to disclose this information out of embarrassment or another reason. Saw palmetto, for example, is sometimes taken to manage an enlarged prostate. A man may feel uncomfortable about the dentist seeing saw palmetto on the medical form. Nevertheless, it’s better, to be honest and understand that a dentist such as Business Name is a medical professional who needs the full history.
