Post-Cancer Oral Rehabilitation

Cancer – A common enemy, implacable and increasingly present in the world’s population

Dentistry, when it is evolved, predictable and safe, has the obligation and the moral duty to leave the trenches of conformism and move on to the battlefield, where the challenge is daily and permanent.

It is up to us as qualified professionals working in an area as specific as Oral Rehabilitation, to find solutions that are not always possible at a first glance, at a first consultation, in the first exams, what the Anglo-Saxons call by the art of:

– “to think out of the box…”

Which in a quick and direct translation leads us to:

– “think outside the box…”.

Thinking outside the box is nothing more than getting unorthodox solutions, or at least not so evident or probable, but which, especially in the context of Medicine, have to be tested, safe and ethically correct solutions.

We didn’t invent anything, we didn’t create anything, we weren’t pioneers in absolutely anything. There are no secrets. Just the desire to be competent and make a difference.

What exists in this Team and in which we are very proud is in our exclusive dedication to this project, we live from CERO and for Cero. What exists in this Team is a group of health professionals and others, who focus on each patient and make this treatment plan an authentic, unique, careful work that we are proud to show.

What is up to us as a Team is to gather all our knowledge and experience accumulated over the years, to be on the “crest of the wave” of the best that is done today around the world, to have state-of-the-art facilities and equipment, and with all these valences together we can aim for a final product that pleases the patient in the first place and as it is clear, to our entire Team.

Cancer Epidimyology

In the case of cancer, recent studies show us that 1 in 4 people will develop cancer during their lifetime and of those, and 1 in 3 will die from the disease. As cold and violent as these numbers may be, everything becomes much sadder and more violent, if we remember that each number corresponds to a person, a patient who is someone’s father, someone’s child, someone’s husband and friend.

The people, who are generally wise, usually say: “which is one of those things that when you don’t die of the disease, you die of the cure…”.

This applies in part here, since cancer treatments are usually violent, deforming, especially in the Maxillofacial area and in global terms of the body, both Radiotherapy and Chemotherapy leave sequelae and conditioning factors that can go about 6 months to several years after the treatment cycles.

Patients live longer, have a greater number of diseases

More and more our patients are polymedicated, with multiple pathologies, some chronic, others with acute clinical conditions, some controlled others not so much and it is not enough for us to look the other way and pretend that we are not facing a complicated situation, to often continue with invasive treatments in patients for whom said treatment would not be the first choice, the safest, the most ethical, the most necessary.

What I mean by this is nothing more than that, for each patient there is a specific, rigorous treatment plan, with clinical and surgical concern and we cannot advocate the same treatment for all patients in an irresponsible, facilitating and ignorant way.

Current guidelines

Among colleagues we usually exchange ideas, clinical cases, opinions, concerns, opinions and something that we usually comment, is the fact that the more we study, the more we know, the more careful and concerned we are with possible, common and rare complications and we are not in a position to risk our professional cards in the slightest, much less and more important, the most precious asset of each patient, their Health and Quality of Life.

The contemporary trend in Medicine is to classify Health as something more complex than the simple absence of pain or disease, but rather as a state in which there is physical and psychological well-being and where the patient’s Quality of Life improves with a certain treatment. (free adaptation of the definition of the World Health Organization – W.H.O.)

The theme of my Thesis and my Research project at the University of London, in general terms, had as its field of research, the development of instruments to assess the Quality of Life of our patients, before and after surgeries and after the end of treatments.

With this, we collect precious data on the impact of treatments on the daily activities of our patients, and on the way they relate to family, friends and co-workers, if applicable.

Future, what we have in store

We live in an incessant search for scientific knowledge, for the improvement of techniques, so that each patient can give at a specific moment of their life and with the conditions that they face before our Clinical Team, the best possible treatment to be able to increase the Quality of Life of our patients.

There are cases, however, in which treatment at that moment is not possible and the best therapeutic decision is not to do the treatment, postponing, waiting for more favorable pathophysiological and psychological conditions.

Communication, between colleagues, between different specialties, between different Treatment Centers is essential for the clinical safety of patients, exchanging medical opinions, consulting the entire clinical process, sending exams, requesting additional analyzes and exams that may be useful and necessary to define clinical conditions and carry out appropriate treatment plans.

Recently we published a case of one of our patients who has been fighting against this great enemy that scares us as much as cancer.

After consulting the clinical file, talking to the Oncology Team that follows the patient and that justice be done, he made himself available in a phenomenal way to give us all the clinical information requested by our Clinic and that with us, in decision and shared responsibilities helped us to help the patient and find the possible solution, at this specific moment within parameters of medical rigor, clinical safety and excellence.

If you want to see the detailed case of this patient, click on the following link: https://www.facebook.com/tiagoribeirocero/posts/2244081839161773?__tn__=K-R

Way of being conscious and responsible in the medical profession

We must always be cautious with criticism of the work of other colleagues, since we are in a medical area in which several times, our colleagues work in unfavorable conditions and with clinical conditions, with which we work towards a compromise solution to carry out the best possible treatment to increase, to restore the Quality of Life of our patients.

I end by thanking you for your attention and availability to read this text of mine, but even more importantly, I end by thanking you for the example of courage, determination and love for life that cancer patients give us, showing humanity that we often give importance to situations that do not even suffer from our waste of time.

See you soon and don’t forget to be happy. Despite everything, smiling doesn’t hurt…

If this is the case, if smiling causes you pain, nausea, or imbalance, consult your dentist.

Until the next opportunity!