Fast Facts: Perio Edition Episode 30
[Andrew Johnston, RDH]
Welcome back, everyone. You are listening to another episode of Fast Facts- Perio Edition brought to you by A Tale of Two Hygienists in partnership with DentistRX. And now, please welcome your host, Katrina Sanders.
[Katrina Sanders, RDH]
Hello and welcome to Fast Facts: Perio Edition. This week, we're going to unpack some of the things that we understand with regards to antibiotic premedication. Of note, for a long time, we have had a lot of shifts in what's been going on with regards to premedication guidelines. And now we're going to start looking at over the next few weeks some information about how premedication guidelines have continued to evolve in our profession. One of the benchmark studies that guided this was a study that was done at the Mayo Clinic in 2015, published in JADA.
This study took 339 patients that experienced a prosthetic joint infection and compared those patients to 339 patients who did have a prosthetic joint but were uninfected. Mayo Clinic wanted to understand, in this case controlled study. What was it that elevated the risk of some of these patients experiencing a prosthetic joint infection versus the other population of patients who did not experience an infection? There were four beacon and benchmark findings from this particular study. The first was that antibiotic premedication before dental treatment was not associated with a lower risk of prosthetic joint infection.
The second point being that of the organisms that were isolated from infection sites, the most commonly encountered organism in these prosthetic joint infection sites was staphylococci. And we understand, of course, that about 60 percent of nosocomial infections occur by drug resistant microorganisms. Unfortunately, that pesky bug Staph is a major entity of this. The third important point in this case, controlled study was that approximately 13.5% of joint infection cases were associated with bacterial flora of oral or dental origin.
And the fourth and perhaps the most impactful finding in this study was that good oral hygiene was associated with a lower risk of prosthetic joint infection. The result of this study, of course, driving dental professionals to optimize oral hygiene status for their patients who are preparing for a prosthetic joint replacement and of course, driving home optimized oral hygiene for patients who do currently have a prosthetic joint to reduce the risks associated with prosthetic joint infection due to bacteremia of oral or dental origin.
Stay tuned as we continue to unpack some new information and some new insight around the utilization of prophylactic antibiotics in the dental laboratory. Have an awesome week.
This has been another episode of Fast Facts - Perio Edition with Katrina Sanders, RDH. Please feel free to reach me on Instagram @thedentalwinegenist or on my website www.KatrinaSanders.com Cheers.
[Andrew Johnston, RDH]
Thank you for listening to another episode of Fast Facts - Perio Edition, brought to you in part by DentistRX makers of the InteliSonic line of power brushes. Find out more by visiting their website at www.dentistrx.com. We'll see you next week for another Fast Fact!
