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PATIENT CAREBeyondfillingsandDentistry professors savelives through hospital workPHOTO BY SARAH KIEWELPediatric dentist Dr. Marcio Guelmann works on a patient at Shands at UF.By Laura MizeWhen you think about doctors saving lives, dental surgeonsmight not be the fi rst who come to mind.But College of Dentistry faculty membersworking at Shands at UF play a vital role in thecare of patients with serious — sometimes evenlife-threatening — conditions.These dentists do everything from treatingemergency room patients with traumatic mouthinjuries to fighting oral infections. In addition toworking at Shands at UF, some also treat patients atthe recently renovated Shands Children’s SurgicalCenter at Ayers Medical Plaza. The job requires thedentists to rotate on-call duties and sometimesrespond to situations in the middle of the night.M. Franklin Dolwick, D.M.D., Ph.D., a professorand chair of the department of oral andmaxillofacial surgery and diagnostic sciences andhead of hospital dentistry at Shands, saidmaintaining good oral health is key to preventingsmall problems from becoming big ones.“Just this week we had a patient that couldpossibly die from a dental infection,” said Dolwickin mid-May, “and those are the kind of things thatpeople don’t appreciate (about hospital dentistry).”Dolwick said the woman, who also has diabetes,neglected her oral health. But hospital dentists areable to save many patients with dental infections.“We treat infections of the jaw, which sometimescan be life-threatening,” Dolwick said. “We dosome cancer surgery … We take out teeth. We do alot of dental implants. We do a lot of jawreconstruction for patients who have had parts oftheir jaw removed for various tumors and so forth.So the oral surgery service itself is very active inthe hospital.”For some patients, hospital dentistry is aproactive service, one that concentrates oneliminating problems before they begin. Preppingpatients before they receive a transplant or undergoother major surgery is an important part of thesedentists’ jobs.“They’re going to go through really complicated,difficult, complex surgeries,” Dolwick said. “Youcertainly don’t want them, at some point after aheart transplant or a heart-valve replacement, beingcompromised with infection because they had abad tooth that wasn’t taken care of.”Along with oral surgery, pediatric dentistry isone of the busiest disciplines in hospital dentistryat Shands. Within the college’s department ofpediatric dentistry, eight of the nine facultymembers work in hospital dentistry.Several factors determine whether a child willreceive care in a regular dental clinic or at ahospital, said Marcio Guelmann, D.D.S., anassociate professor and chair of pediatric dentistry.These factors include the “amount of treatment(necessary), the behavior of the child, how complexthe medical history is, the number of visits and thetravel distance,” he explained.“And then we will decide if this is suitable to bedone in the clinic under sedation, or (if) the bestenvironment will be in the operating room.”Pediatric dentists also treat adult patients withmental or physical disabilities.When necessary, pediatric dentists work withother specialists to coordinate treatment of youngpatients to avoid putting them under generalanesthesia multiple times.“If a child has a need to go to a procedure inENT, for example, at the same time this child hassevere decay, we try to coordinate to do theprocedure together,” Guelmann said. “There is alot of very good collaboration between the subspecialtiesin pediatric medicine and ourdepartment.”College of Dentistry faculty members are part ofa craniofacial team that treats cleft lip and palatepatients, too. Plastic surgeons repair the children’slips and palates, but dentists do pretty mucheverything else.“Orthodontists of course do the orthodontictreatment, the pedodontists do the children’sdentistry for those kids and then oral surgery doesthe alveolar bone grafts and the corrective jawsurgery that’s necessary,” Dolwick explained.Dolwick said the way oral surgery meshes somany different things together is what drew him tothe profession in the first place.“For me, it gets into the whole challenge ofworking in the discipline that really integratesmedicine and dentistry and the basic sciences andcare of people.” PPOST07 / 08 • 0912 POSTVisit us online @ http://news.health.ufl.edu for the latest news and HSC events.