Tooth enamel is the strongest substance in the human body. It's harder than steel. Which helps explain why the three words "root canal treatment" often strike such terror into patients sitting in the dental chair. It starts by boring a hole through enamel as effortlessly as if it were rice paper. Ninety-nine percent of the time, that gaping hole is filled and sealed immediately after treatment. A few months ago, I met a patient I'll call Janet, to protect her privacy. She was one of the 1 percent.
I carefully peered my head into her mouth. The remaining pulp, or core, of the treated tooth—an amalgam of nerves, blood vessels, and immune cells—had blossomed out of the fractured crown into a twisting, intersecting polyp with the color and consistency of bubble gum. She had chronic hyperplastic pulpitis, a rare inflammatory condition that triggers pulp tissue to irreversibly expand above the walls of the enamel shell. I pulled my stethoscope off the shelf and checked what I had been trained to with every new patient: her blood pressure. 174 over 104, I whispered to myself, having expected only a slight deviation from the normal 120 over 80. This seemed impossible. I checked the other arm; 172/104. I waited 15 minutes and checked again. 164/100.
Hypertensive emergency, which can cause patients to spontaneously suffer a severe stroke, heart attack, or kidney damage, occurs when blood pressure reaches 180/110 or higher. While her blood pressure was trending downward, Janet was dangerously close to that threshold. I asked her if any physician in the past had ever told her that she had high blood pressure. A recent Dominican immigrant unsure of her past medical history, she told me she couldn't remember. Her expanding pulp, a rarity for me, was only a distraction from a bigger concern—her heart. I immediately called her primary care physician, discussed the situation, and told her to go see her doctor immediately. Janet, who had showed up for some basic dental work, had been inches away from a medical emergency.
A 2016 Association of American Medical Colleges report projects that over the next 10 years, the U.S. will face a serious physician shortage, especially among primary care physicians in rural geographic areas. Despite increased health insurance coverage for millions of Americans over the last few years, affordable health care is still difficult to access in rural areas. Certain states, such as Tennessee, Iowa, and my home state of Arizona, are seeing insurance companies drop out of individual markets due to political uncertainty, making access to affordable care harder for a significant fraction of the U.S. population, including many of those I grew up with.
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http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/medical_examiner/2017/08/why_your_next_doctor_could_be_your_dentist.html
