DENTIST AND DOCTOR.

Manawatu Standard, Volume LV, Issue 257, 27 September 1935, Page 16

DENTIST AND DOCTOR.

NEED FOR CO-OPERATION. NAPIER, Sept. 25. Tire need for closer co-operation between the medical and dental professions, and the necessity for a measure of conservatism in dental practice were urged by Air R. G. Crawford in his presidential address to the conference of the New Zealand Dental Association in Napier. “Let us save serviceable teefih whenever possible, and above all let us do unto our patients only what we would have done unto ourselves,” said Air Crawford. He deplored the wholesale extraction of teeth without regard to the patient’s future.

Air Crawford said it might safely be laid down that the surgeon, the physician, and the dental surgeon must advance hand-in-hand with their interchange of practcial knowledge, their mutual esteem, arid their consideration of one another, in order to meet present-day requirements, namely, tho hopes and demands fo suffering humanity, which arrest attention and engage sympathy.. “I would solicit your attention,” said Air Crawford, “to consideration of conservatism in dentistry and medical practice against that of premature and unnecessary action, based as it is on hasty judgment and unwarranted ignorance of the principles of constitutional welfare. The dentist must develop a broader view of his duties and responsibilities to Iris patient other than that of the repair of tlie ravages of dental caries or the extraction of teeth and their restoration. “RECKLESS EXTRACTION.’-’ “Nature proves by experience her protest against the reckness extraction protest against the reckless extraction ing to their enthusiasm regarding the theory of local infection, frequently advise tho wholesale extraction of teeth, and in some cases of perfectly sound teeth at that, without any regard or thought for their patients’ future or for the satisfactory mastication of their food following such practices.”

Continuing, the speaker said that neither were digestion after-dis-turbances nor nutrition taken into consideration, the symptoms of which might well be further aggravated by ill-fitting or imperfect dentures, for technical skill was the only guarantee for perfection in denture construction.

“How often does the physician encounter disappointment arising from miraculous cures reported as the result of wide extraction?” asked the speaker,. “These cures in manv cases are but temporary, and the unfortunate patients again find themselves on the doctor’s doorstep. It seems to be the practice of some dentists and physicians to extract teeth first, and if the condition of which the patient complains does not disappear, to look for another cause of the trouble.”