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Scaling & Root Planing Teeth

Spent my afternoon in the undergraduate clinic trying to clean my patient's teeth, which in my opinion had not been brushed for a very long time - judging from the smell and the amount of gunk that was on his teeth (the correct terminology would be plaque and calculus I suppose).

Having a patient with bad breath is tough. The trick is to make sure your nose is nowhere near their mouth - effectively meaning one has to either sit up higher or view from slightly different angles than what one is used to. Very tricky.

Scaling and root planing in itself is quite fulfilling when you have a patient with lots of plaque and calculus (which I did). Sitting there for an afternoon scraping patiently using scary-looking instruments and acting like I knew exactly what I was doing was quite fun - in a bloody and disgusting way. Digging right under the gums to get to the dirt trapped between the tooth and the gum isn't very pleasant. To crown it all, I gashed my patient's cheek with one of the hand scalers once.

It started bleeding and I saw it was a 1cm cut. Felt terrible but what's done cannot be undone. Luckily it was a shallow gash and my patient is very understanding.

This is why going to a dental student for treatment isn't a very good idea.



Hand scalers - different types for different teeth. Don't they look nice and colourful?

5 slices of bread with kaya = 1000 calories
1 regular KFC chips = 250 calories
1 KFC Wicked Wing = 80 calories
Total= 1330 calories (better, but 1000 calories on bread and kaya??)

posted by Evelyn at 8:33 PM