General medicine and surgery for dental practitioners. Part 5--Psychiatry

Patients with Psychiatric Disorders: What the General Dental Practitioner Needs to Know

Psychiatric illness is extremely common and the general dental practitioner (GDP) will inevitably encounter patients with such an illness. This article outlines common psychiatric conditions that the GDP should be familiar with alongside its impact on oral health. It also gives a systematic approach to dealing with a patient who presents to practice with an undiagnosed psychiatric illness, whereby the illness interferes with delivery of suitable dental care.

Essentials of medical history-taking in dental patients

The starting point in the assessment and management of any patient is dependent on good history-taking. The main parts of the history-taking process well known to practitioners are the presenting complaint, the history of the presenting complaint and the current and past medical history. This paper concentrates on those aspects of the process that are particularly important to dental practitioners. Clinical Relevance: The cornerstone of safe and effective patient management lies with the history. This paper describes various aspects of history-taking and highlights important areas.

Stomatologic complications of eating disorders

Since the 1990s numerous international experts have reported about the somatic complications of eating disorders including those having a dental and stomatological nature. Several reports emphasised that deformations in the oral cavity resulting from this grave nutritional disease typical of the young generation could already appear in the early stage and, therefore, dentists are among the first to diagnose them. Dentists are still often unaware of the importance of their role in multidisciplinary treatment. Even if they knew what the disease was about and recognised it on the basis of deformations in the oral cavity in time, their advice that their patients should brush their teeth more often would fail to eliminate the root cause of the problem. Not only the earliest possible treatment of the complications of the bingeing-purging mechanism and the maintenance of oral hygiene are important, but controlling and curing pathological habits with active participation of psychiatrists are also required to ensure full recovery. Due to the multidisciplinary nature of the disease, manifold communication is required. For this reason, publishing the dental ramifications of organic and systemic diseases at dental conferences and in technical journals, as well as providing information about oral complications of eating disorders for general practitioners and specialists are particularly important. Orv. Hetil., 2012, 153, 1779–1786.