What you do not know can hurt you and your patients
Modern dentistry has expanded the arsenal of services to restore patient’s oral health and cosmetic needs like never before. These changes have corresponded to an increasingly complex medical environment where patients are presenting at a more advanced age, with more medical conditions, and taking more medications. An understanding of pharmacology as it relates to the patient and their treatment plan is essential for a safe and successful outcome to the planned care. This includes clearly understanding how the drugs that the patient is currently taking, as well as those you intend to administer or prescribe, will affect the patient’s systemic health and treatment outcomes.
The objectives of this course are for the participant to be able to:
- Understand changing trends in patient population with regard to medical conditions and medications
- Understand basic principles of pharmacology and how they apply to everyday decisions in your dental practice
- Understand how local anesthetics work and why they can be more or less effective in commonly encountered situations in dentistry
- Understand which patients are at medical risk with which local anesthetics and what can be done to minimize that risk
- Understand how to make profound analgesia from local anesthetics more predictable
- Be aware of which patients are at risk with vasoconstrictors and how their medications affect that risk
- Understand why vasoconstrictors can have an opposite effect to their intended result
- Utilize modern sedation techniques in their everyday dental practice
- Use nitrous oxide safely, effectively, and with a predictable outcome
- Understand the most common drug interactions encountered in dentistry
- Define which drug interactions are definitely to be avoided, which ones deserve caution, and which ones are essentially insignificant
- List the most appropriate analgesic drugs for dentistry, their use, and how to minimize their side effects
- Implement the most practical emergency drug kit for your dental practice
Additional topics addressed:
- Pharmacokinetics
- Pharmacodynamics
- Pharmacotherapeutics
- Alpha and Beta Receptors
- Metabolism of Drugs
- NSAID Toxicity
- CYP-450 Enzymes
- Sedative Agents
- Epinephrine Reversal
- Bioavailability
- Benzodiazepines
- Pharmacology Software
- Non-Opioid vs. Opioid Analgesics
- The Emergency Plan
LVI Global is an ADA CERP Recognized Provider. ADA CERP is a service of the American Dental Association to assist dental professionals in identifying quality providers of continuing dental education. ADA CERP does not approve or endorse individual courses or instructors, nor does it imply acceptance of credit hours by boards of dentistry. LVI Global designates this activity for 7.5 continuing education credits.
