Dental Assistants

The role of a Dental Assistant is to help Dentists and Dental Hygienists carry out the duties of providing quality dental care to individuals as well as providing an environment with sterile equipment and a comfortable setting for the procedures to take place in.

Dental assistants are a valuable resource to the area of dentistry. While they arent qualified to perform cleanings or extensive dental procedures, they keep things moving at a steady pace. Their role is often behind the scenes getting everything ready. There are more duties to Dental Assistant than what meets the eye.

Being a Dental Assistant takes a particular type of person. You have to enjoy working with the public. You also have to have confidence in your abilities. A sincere interest in the dental field and helping others are also recommended. Dental Assistants must have excellent communication skills as they are an important part of the patient and dental staff relationship.

Dental Assistants generally review the medical history with the patient and help them feel comfortable prior to procedures taking place. The often explain what the procedure entails and what will be taking place. The Dental Assistant will be present during the procedure to assist either the Hygienist or the Dentist. During the procedure, the Dental Assistant will clear out the patients mouth, adjust the chair, move the lights, and anything else that can make the experience better for the patient. After the procedure the Dental Assistant will explain follow up treatment to the patient as well as provide the patient will information to assist in the healing process.

A Dental Assistant has to know how to prioritize their time to ensure all their duties are taken care of. One of the most important duties of a Dental Assistant is proper cleaning of all the dental tools. They must be properly sanitized. Each tool needs to be examined to ensure it is still usable. Dental assistants must also know what tools and equipment each dental procedure requires. This allows them to set up tool kits to have at the dental station prior to a procedure being done.

Dentists and Dental Hygienists depend on the Dental Assistant being alert and prepared during all dental procedures. They want to have all the necessary tools at their fingertips for easy access and to allow them to remain concentrated on the patient and the procedure they are performing. In some states, Dental Hygienists are allowed to administer local anesthetics to prepare the patient for their procedures.

A very important role of the Dental Assistant is to monitor the patient during the procedure. This may involve taking their vital signs. Other signs to watch for include changes in breathing patterns, disorientation, and a glazed look in the eyes. All of these can indicate an emergency situation. Patients may have an allergic reaction to the anesthetic or suffer a medical ailment such as a heart attack.

Dental Assistants need to be prepared for such emergencies to arise and react calmly and quickly. It is important that every Dental Assistant is trained in CPR. They should also have emergency phone numbers in place if the need arises. It is the responsibility of the Dental Assistant and other staff to do all they can for the patient until proper medical help arrives. Doing so can make the difference between life and death.

The role of Dental Assistant involves wearing many hats. For those in the profession, they often enjoy having a variation in their daily routine. They love working with people as well as working in the dental profession.

The Whole Truth About Acne Home Remedies

A lot of people suffer from acne. Anyone with acne has one goal in mind: to get rid of it. The severity of the condition will vary between people, as will the effectiveness of certain treatments. You shouldn’t have to deal with the embarrassment of blemishes on your face. The prescription and over-the-counter medications vary in price and effectiveness toward your skin. But why not try a few acne home remedies first? You may find something that works for you from your very own bathroom or kitchen.

The main purpose of an acne medication is to unclog your pores and calm inflammation. Acne home remedies are usually not for extreme cases, but more aimed at the mild to occasional blemishes. Some acne home remedies sound a little silly, and are not tested or proven by a real dermatologist. Some home remedies may worsen your condition or not effect it at all. You should be aware of this possibility before you try any of these.

Common acne home remedies include: salt water, toothpaste, egg whites, ice, apple cider vinegar, steam, or wheat germ.

Washing your face with warm, mild salt water dries up excess acne-inducing oils. The advantage to using this instead of a normal soap to wash your face is that it is less likely to aggravate the acne or your skin.

Applying a bit of toothpaste on a visible pimple before you go to sleep helps reduce swelling. It also keeps the area free of oils that could make the spot worse. Be sure to use an actual paste because a gel will not have the same effect. This is the most common of all the acne home remedies.

Dab egg whites on a pimple that is already on the surface. If you leave it on overnight, it is said to draw out the infection and speed up the healing process.

Holding a cube of ice on acne before bed should visibly decrease the inflammation and swelling. It may also reduce the chances of scarring after your skin has cleared up.

Placing a cotton ball into apple cider Vinegar and then applying it to your infected area will almost instantly reduce swelling. This works especially well for large inflamed spots.

You are always advised not to squeeze any pimples, however, blackheads will not go away on their own. Opening your pores using steam to can assist you when you are cleaning your face. Take a hot shower or put your head over the vapors of a boiling pot of water.

Wheat germ, which can be found in most stores, is one of the only acne home remedies taken internally. Taking wheat germ with one meal a day can clear your acne and leave your skin softer than it was before because it is rich in helpful vitamins.

The most commonly effective acne home remedies are found in most homes.
The benefit of experimenting with these on your blemishes is that you don’t have to go out and buy anything. If it doesn’t work, you didn’t waste any money in the process. If it does help the condition of your acne, then you have a great, cheap solution to your problem.

How Physiotherapy Can Help With Sports Injuries

When players have sports injuries, they turn to physiotherapy for rehabilitation. Physiotherapy, also called physical therapy, offers help whether the player is having surgery to correct the damage or not.

One example of the many sports injuries is an anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) injury. This is an injury to the knee. It is one of the common sports injuries in people who play sports that challenge their knees, such as hockey, skating, skiing, basketball, and of course, football. It can limit the range of a player’s motion in that leg, and make the leg weak.

Surgery is sometimes done for these sports injuries, but physiotherapy is always a part of the treatment. The three major exercises done to start the healing process of ACL are heel slides, quad sets, and straight leg raises.

Heel slides are exercises for ACL sports injuries that are easy to understand, but may be painful to do at first. One simply lies on the bed or floor with the foot down. Then, one slides the foot slowly towards the buttocks until it hurts a little, and slides it back. This and the other exercises help prepare the knee for surgery or to heal without it.

Another of the sports injuries that physiotherapy is used for is tennis elbow. One might get tennis elbow from playing tennis, certainly, but it can also come about from any activity that involves twisting the wrist.

Sports injuries like tennis elbow are treated with a comprehensive plan of physiotherapy. Exercises are explained and assigned. Another common procedure for sports injuries is the use of ultrasound. Ultrasound is a way of applying heat deep into the muscle for pain relief.

Electrical stimulation can be used to keep pain from being felt through the nervous system. It is used for tennis elbow and many other sports injuries. Massage and manual therapy can also be used for physiotherapy.

Massage is one of the forms of soft tissue manipulation. However, soft tissue manipulation is to muscles what chiropractic is to bones. It deals not only with muscle, but with tendons and connective tissue as well. It is a specialized field of physiotherapy that has been used for people with sports injuries on many occasions.

As many children’s sports teams are becoming ever more competitive, sports injuries among youngsters is increasing. Often, a well-meaning parent will tell the child to shake it off and keep playing. It is even more important for children to get adequate physiotherapy than it is for adults. Children are just developing, and a problem in childhood can lead to lifelong pain.

Some sports injuries happen because something physically traumatic happens to your body. Someone runs into you as you run with the football towards the end zone, for example. Other times, it is simply a matter of the physical demands you put on your body.

Physiotherapy is instrumental in the healing of many sports injuries. Many professional sports teams have physiotherapists on their staffs. In fact, either ACL or tennis elbow can become permanent conditions without the use of physiotherapy procedures.

A Permanent Cure for Acne Scars?

Ask anybody who has ever suffered from acne what was the least enjoyable part of the whole experience and probably the most possible answer will be the scars – acne scars that remain long after acne is gone. If having acne is considered bad, then what about having acne scars for several years more?

If your acne has already progressed beyond the initial stage of whiteheads and blackheads and you now have pimples and scars on your face, then you have to do two things at the same time – get rid of pimples and get rid of acne scars.

Before discussing how to eliminate acne scars, you may want to know…

What are acne scars?

Acne scars are caused when pimples either get inflamed or do not heal fully. Acne scars are formed when at least one of the layers of healthy skin is injured. When the skin is damaged and bleeding, the body forms new tissue fibers at the place to heal the wound and stop the bleeding. It is these tissues that may appear as a scar.

So getting rid of scars requires that the scar tissue be replaced by healthy tissue by some process or method.

There are several methods to help acne scars but in practice very few of them may be very effective. And some methods may have side effects that you may want to be aware of before you start such a program.

Laser Resurfacing: A carbon dioxide laser burns away the damaged skin, layer by layer. The depth of penetration is controlled. As the outer layers of damaged skin is removed, new skin cells begin to form as the healing process starts and in a few weeks, a younger looking smoother skin surface begins to appear.

Dermabrasion: This uses a spinning diamond instrument or a rotating wire brush to wear down the outer layers of the skin that have been damaged. And when the skin starts healing, younger and smoother skin will replace the old skin removed by abrasion.

Chemical peels for acne scars: Acidic solutions are applied to the skin to peel away the damaged layers and the new skin that is formed is usually smoother. Chemical peels range from mild to deep penetration. Though chemical peels can be applied at home, it would be advisable to get a dermatologist to apply it.

Punch grafts: More suitable for deep and pitted acne scars, this method involves punching a hole to remove the scar and then removing a small piece of undamaged skin.

But the question you may want to ask is… do they work?

All of the treatments mentioned above seem to have a moderate success rate – while they seem to work well for others, some are less than delighted with their treatments. While results like these may be expected with any medical procedure, your face is a very important part of your life and you will want to be absolutely certain that any treatment will be beneficial to your sense of well-being.