For Aldona Carney, a Wichita mother of a 20-year-old son with severe autism, daily activities are a struggle that sometimes turn violent.
So a regular dentist checkup for her son, Neil, is unfathomable.
Carney said her son received anesthesia for dentist checkups when he was younger. But now that he’s phasing into adulthood, she couldn’t find a dentist to perform dental work with sedation.
GraceMed, a nonprofit health care provider for low-income and uninsured patients, offers sedative dental work for adults with severe developmental and intellectual disabilities. The organization is one of few providers that offer the service in Kansas, said Dave Sanford, CEO of GraceMed.
“It’s made a huge impact for a number of people’s lives that were suffering from cavities and rotten teeth,” Carney said.
For anyone, dental health serves a vital function for the entire body. Oral health affects a person’s heart, blood pressure and even joint and bone health.
But for disabled adults who can’t speak for themselves, oral health also plays a key role in their behavior.
“If they have a cavity, their behaviors can be even more extreme,” she said.
Carney said that’s happened in the past with her son, Neil, who already struggles with aggression.
Roger Nolte, chief dental officer at GraceMed, said a dentist can’t work in the mouth of a patient who isn’t sedated, so the patients often have not received oral care for many years by the time they go to GraceMed.
The most extreme case, he said, was a full-mouth teeth extraction he performed on a disabled woman who had not received much, if any, prior dental care.
“Oftentimes these patients can’t tell you they’re in pain. It’s their caregivers that notice they’re not eating properly,” he said.
Nolte said after the patients are sedated, he takes X-rays of their teeth; cleans and examines them; and performs any dental work needed, including root canals, extractions and cavities.
He said they allot around 1.5 hours for each patient, which gives him enough time to fix any problems he may find.
GraceMed contracts with Special Anesthesia Services, a Derby-based company, for sedation services and performs dental sedation every Monday. Sanford, of GraceMed, said the organization serves around 16 to 20 sedative patients each month.
He said GraceMed started sedative dental work for children several years ago using grant funding. When the grant funds ran out in, he said, he worked with the state to continue the services, but this time with adults as well.
Toward the beginning of 2014, he said GraceMed established agreements with managed care organizations that provide Medicaid to Kansans to create a referral system. The managed care organizations find the patients that need sedative dental work and refer them to GraceMed.
He said GraceMed expanded sedative dental services from twice a month to once a week in the spring.
He said the services are not offered to elderly patients with Alzheimer’s or dementia because Medicare won’t reimburse dental costs.
Megan Wise, dental outreach coordinator for GraceMed, said the families she works with are often relieved.
“By the time they find us they’re usually pretty happy because they’ve hit a lot of dead ends,” she said. “They don’t know where to go.”
Source: http://www.kansas.com/news/business/health-care/article34124613.html
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