In my office, I'd say that for every patient who is freshly brushed (either in the office or immediately before they came to the office) that there are twice as many that didn't
😱 Granted I'm normally not seing 2/3rds of their last meal stuck between their teeth, but a piece of bagel in a molar embrassure space mid to late morning, a piece of lettuce at the gingival marginal of a molar with some recession mid afternoon, some soft food matter in an occlussal groove, etc, etc.
Most of the time, the worst ones are the coffee breath folks(they'll typically also smell like cigarette smoke). The bad side is you have to deal with the coffee breath, the good side is that 99% of them have their coffee light and sweet and this keep their strep mutans well fed which is good for business
The biggest percentage of the non brush patients though have to be the 10 to 15 year olds who have the appointment immediately after school. You're almost guarenteed to see some oreo or doritos in the central groove, or a kool aid/gatoraide stained tongue(especially the boys) in that age demographic.
I don't get offened by it, I just(fairly dramatically and sarcastically) remove the debris with an explorer and then show it to them. If they're and adolescent I'll then say, "if you were your boyfriend/girlfiend would you want to kiss a mouth with that in it??"
😱 😱 😉 I've created many an avid brusher with that line!
😉
Biggest horror story: I was a 2nd year dental student, and my school was helping do oral screening for the athletes at the Connecticut Special Olympics Summer games. I went to look at this one athelete's mouth(he was about 35 and was fully edentulous with complete upper and lower dentures) and he had eaten a bunch of cheetos about 1 hour before
😱 I took the dentures out to examine the soft tissue and all I was was partially digested cheetos paste
😱 Closest I've evr gotten to vomiting while treating a patient
