NS-16 - Treating Patients with Disabilities - An Endodontic Perspective

To treat or not to treat? This is a common dilemma we face when managing patients with disabilities/special needs. Despite improvements in oral health care accessibility over the past decade, patients with special needs still experience difficulties accessing dental care due to limited geographic, financial, and social access, as well as some dentists’ unwillingness or self-perceived inability to treat where they feel they are not adequately trained to deal with a patient with special needs or disability and in some instances extraction of a tooth may prove to be a more manageable treatment option. In addition, often these patients are incapable of understanding, assuming responsibility for, or cooperating with preventative oral care, making them vulnerable to developing oral or oropharyngeal conditions that yield negative impacts on their oral health and quality of life. If the dental community can be shown that endodontic treatment is a viable option, then saving teeth for this population can improve their oral health-related quality of life.