Busy Bee

You know how you wake up some mornings and know it’s going to be a good day? Well this was one of those days. I woke up feeling like a whole new person. My mind was clear and ready to learn about some dentistry. This was a good way to start the day since I was beginning to observe at a new dentist office since Dr. Pio is out of town due to his son’s wedding.

I absolutely loved this new office! It is so busy, patients, dentists, and assistants everywhere. If you know me, you know busy is how I like to be. This office is run very differently than most offices. The head dentist oversees what all of his assistant dentists do. The dentists do the procedures and the head dentist, Dr. Gurucharan comes in and checks their work. Today I followed around Dr. Gurucharan, which I imagine I will do every day. While he checks the other dentist’s work, he also does a lot of his own work.  Today I observed him extract two teeth, one which was very difficult since the tooth was extremely broken. He had to put stitches in after the extraction which I have never seen done before. They use a needle which looks like a fish hook with a string attached and run it through the opening until it is closed.
 

Dr. Gurucharan also preformed two root canal treatments which he did differently than they do in the other offices I have been to. He took more steps and used more technology during the procedures to ensure accuracy. He used what he called an Apex Locator to find the length of the canals along with taking x-rays with a file placed in the canal for measurement. I learned today that they do not use the same precautions that we do in the US when giving x-rays. There was no lead involved.

After the root canal on one of the patients he began to do surgery on the same tooth. The patient had an abscess which caused the bone to die above the tooth. I began to watch the surgery as he cut the gum line with his baby scalpel and pull back the gum with a wad of cotton. Unfortunately it was time for me to leave right when the fun was about to start. Hopefully I will get to see something similar tomorrow!