THE TEETH
THE most exciting news in dentistry today is not any new
drill, anesthetic, denture material, or other fix-it device or procedure. Just
the opposite: It's a whole new concept which puts the emphasis on stopping
dental disease before it can happen rather than treating it after it does. It
is based on the development of simple, practical tools for calling a halt to
tooth decay and gum disease. It promises, if you use it, to cut your dental
pains and dental bills and could do much for your appearance and general health
as well, no matter how old you are or even how much you have been ravaged by
dental disease up to now. It is high time we had it.
Good teeth contribute not
only to appearance but to good digestion. They are necessary, too, for good and
clear speech. And teeth that are free of disease provide no portal of entry for
infections that may spread to affect other areas of the body. And yet tooth and
gum troubles, which have plagued man through all recorded history, do so even
now.
Even though American dentistry has been the best in the
world from a reparative standpoint, the American mouth is a disaster area,
getting worse, not better. Right now, more than 20 million Americans have lost
all their teeth; 90 million have at least 18 missing, decayed, or filled teeth;
and there are more than a billion unfilled cavities in the country. By age 35,
one of every five of us needs dentures; by 55, one of every two. 'Fifty percent
of all two-year-olds have decaying teeth; by the teens, five of every six
youngsters do.
On top of this, gum disease takes a huge toll, affecting not
only older people-90 percent of those over 65 and 80 percent of the middle-aged
-but also two thirds of young adults. Even among 12-year-olds, four out of five
have gingivitis, the precursor of most gum disease. Dentists have been kept so
busy fixing and patching that, according to a recent survey, 40.3 percent of
the 90,000 dentists in the country are unable to take on any new patients.
This, despite the fact that 40 per- cent of the population, practicing complete
neglect, have never once visited a dentist.
So bad is our dental health that,
according to the American Council on Education, if all the dentists in the
country were lined up on the East Coast and moved westward, taking care of the
needs of the population as they went along, they would get only as far as
Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, before having to turn around and go back and start
over again. Such facts, coupled with insights into the why of both decay and
gum disease, are galvanizing the dental profession. Its leaders and the best
dental schools now are working to turn dentistry into a new kind of
profession-no longer mechanical and reparative in major emphasis but rather
primarily devoted to making dental disease as avoidable, in effect, as measles
or smallpox.
Already, the Armed Forces dental corps has developed
pioneering programs which are producing dramatic results. At the U.s. Naval
Academy, Rear Admiral Frank M. Kyes, Chief of the Navy's Dental Division, has
reported, "Dental decay has virtually be- come a thing of the past."
In a recent cross-country trip to visit dentists leading in introducing the new
preventive dentistry into private practice, one of us found them reporting
enthusiastically that decay can be reduced by as much as 90 percent and even
more in both children and adults; that gum disease also can be checked; and
that the required measures are to a very great extent simply new, more
effective methods of home care.
