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DENTAL TRIBUNE The World’s Dental Newspaper · U.S. Edition PRSRTSTD U.S.Postage PAID Permit#306 Mechanicsburg,PA DentalTribuneAmerica 213West35thStreet Suite#801 NewYork,NY10001 AD HYGIENE TRIBUNE The World’s Dental Hygiene Newspaper · U.S. Edition CosmetiC tRiBUNe the World’s Cosmetic Dentistry Newspaper · U.s. edition u page 4A g DT page 2A upage 1C Reducing gummy smiles Increasing the crown-to-gum ratio in order to decrease gummy smilles.u page 1B AO annual meeting Catch a glimpse of the new technologies intro- duced at the AO in Orlando. Facing a daily grind? If practicing is a grind, there are steps you can take to change this. The Eco-Dentistry Association (EDA), an international association promoting environmentally sound practices in dentistry, recently announced a new offering for den- tal professionals. The EDA’s GreenDOC den- tal office certification program is a green business certification designed specifically for dentistry. The program provides everything dentists need to achieve their per- fect shade of green. Transcendentist in Berkeley, Calif., Pure Dental in Dallas and ORA Dental Studio in Chicago became the organization’s first recipients of GreenDOC certifica- tion. The EDA announced the first charter-certified offices at the recent Midwinter Meeting in Chi- cago. The GreenDOC Checklist of Certified GreenDOC offices Georgia dentist says state will pay for general anesthesia Severe anxiety, phobia, severe gagging, life-threatening allergies and the inability to use local anes- thetics are among the myriad of reasons that more than 100,000 Georgians are unable to receive the dental care they need in a dentist’s office, says Dr. David Kurtman of Marietta, Ga. For these people, Kurtzman says, dentistry ranges from some- thing nearly akin to torture to a life- threatening experience — yet many want and need care. In 1999, to little fanfare, the state senate of Georgia passed a law to help these people. Because their only alternative is to have their den- tal work done while they are truly and fully asleep, Senate Bill 66 man- dates medical insurance to pay the additional costs of general anes- thesia and hospital costs for these people. “Once the prohibitive costs of being fully asleep in the hospital are handled, a lot more of these people can afford the dental care they really need,” Kurtzman explained. “No one really talks about this law, certainly not the insurance companies,” says Kurtzman, who has been treating such cases for more than 20 years. He says he had worked for years trying to get these costs paid. Even when he got to speak with people within the insurance companies he called, nobody ever mentioned it. Not until a chance call to the insurance commissioners’ office in Atlanta led Kurtzman to the obscure bill did his office start getting more and more coverage for patients. The law states that medical insur- ance must pay hospital and anesthe- sia fees for any person for whom a successful result cannot be expected using local anesthesia. “Because of physical, intellectual or another compromising medical condition” of the insured patient, anyone who really needs it can now expect coverage for sedation den- tistry. “We are seeing people who have lived with pain and infection for lit- erally years,” Kurtzman says. Care under general anesthesia in the hospital operating room gives thousands of these people hope for a healthy, painless and beautiful smile, he says. DT (Source: PRWeb) IMPLANT TRIBUNE The World’s Implant Newspaper · U.S. Edition March 2010 www.dental-tribune.com Vol. 5, No. 7 Did you know that: • 40 percent of the western population is missing one tooth or more? • in the United States alone, approximately 10 percent of the popu- lation is completely edentulous? • every year about two million Americans loose a tooth due to sporting accidents? g See page 10A Dental implant planning