Disaster in Asia

[Dr.BadVibes]

---

Members do not see this ad.

As we hopefully all know of the horrible disaster that has happened in Asia, relief medical teams from around the world are travelling to the region to help in anyway possible. However, I have not heard a word of these medical teams consisting of dentists. What role do you think dentists can play in the relief effort?

Obviously our profession does not deal with life and death situations such as our MD counterparts, but there must be some sort of need that requires the skills and abilities of a dental professional.

Or am I just some idealistic freshmen dental student who is glorifying his future profession?

Any thoughts on this are welcome.

 

[inzanoni]

I'm a fourth year dental student in Bangkok Thailand
I think what dentists can help for the survivors are maybe suturing , sorting the injured people or at least check the vital sign
Today my teachers went down there to the south for dental forensic ...maybe this is the most possible thing of the dentist role

As we hopefully all know of the horrible disaster that has happened in Asia, relief medical teams from around the world are travelling to the region to help in anyway possible. However, I have not heard a word of these medical teams consisting of dentists. What role do you think dentists can play in the relief effort?

Obviously our profession does not deal with life and death situations such as our MD counterparts, but there must be some sort of need that requires the skills and abilities of a dental professional.

Or am I just some idealistic freshmen dental student who is glorifying his future profession?

Any thoughts on this are welcome.

 

[JakeMUSC]

I'm a fourth year dental student in Bangkok Thailand
I think what dentists can help for the survivors are maybe suturing , sorting the injured people or at least check the vital sign
Today my teachers went down there to the south for dental forensic ...maybe this is the most possible thing of the dentist role

Immediately, dentists are not needed for what they do. However, after stablizing critical conditions many people whom were injured in the mouth will need dental attention.

 

[DrJeff]

Basically dentists will play some sort of a role in the recovery effort, unfortunately it will be for victim identification. The biggest problem though is the vast majority of the victims likely had no formal dental records, therefore many of the victims will not be identified before the mass burial happens 🙁 I did see a report on the national news tonight where they were taking DNA swabs from surviving relatives as a hope to identify some of the victims, however in that tropical climate body degredation has been very rapid and due to public health issues(and the sheer magnitude of the casulaties), many surving relatives will not get the actual body of a relative to burry in an individual grave.

As a rule of thumb though dentists are included memebrs of a mass casuality response team, but the vast majority of the time the dentists role is that of victim identification via dental records. On a personal note, it was a very surreal/eye opening situation when about a week after the 9/11 tragedy my partner and I had a request for dental records from the victim identifcation unit from that tragedy. 😱

 

[jk5177]

I apologize if my question is too basic. But how does a dental record actually helpful to identify victims. I imagine if a victims jaw matches the x-rays from the dental record, then that can be used as identification. But what if the person is burned, and all the teeth are loses from the jaw? Do they take an x-ray of the teeth (looking for cavities and etc) and then match it with the x-ray from the record? Or do they compare the tooth anatomy of the two sets? Maybe they perform as many of the above procedures till a match is made? Thanks for your answering.

 

[dentite001]

Having specialized skills will help. But in a crisis, people are often are not that organized. If you are there, they will find a use for you. Funny how much control we think we have over our lives when in school. Events like this and 9/11 put things in perspective.