Wake Smiles, a community dental clinical founded 20 years ago in Raleigh, serves thousands of uninsured adults living 200% under the federal poverty guidelines in Wake County. A high percentage of these patients live with uncontrolled systemic diseases, and the clinic’s interdisciplinary approach incorporates patient education about the relationship between oral and systemic health, and ways to improve both. Dr. David Wong , who had previously participated in the Foundation’s international access to care program, got involved with the clinic through the outreach of executive director Sommer Wisher, RDH. “Sommer does a really great job seeking out volunteers, and that was something I was interested in because that’s actually how I got into dentistry, by volunteering at a community health clinic like the one she runs,” Wong says. “I felt it would be a good opportunity to give back. I always promised myself that once I got out of school I would help the type of clinics that made me want be a dentist in the first place.” Wisher is less modest about her enthusiasm for Dr. Wong’s participation. “He found the [grant] opportunity and called me, and I was like ‘I’m not saying no,’” she remembers. ‘I’m saying heck yeah, let’s do it!’” Wong’s project provides endodontic care in-house one day a month. Before that Wake Smiles was lucky to refer out one case a month, and sometimes
“ I felt it would be a good opportunity to give back. I always promised myself that once I got out of school I would help the type of clinics that made me want be a dentist in the first place. ”
– Dr. David Wong
just one case a quarter, to one of four local volunteers, amounting to less than 40 treatments a year. Wong’s involvement will more than double that number, and now that he has properly outfitted the office with an endo cart and rotary equipment, it also helps solicit more volunteers. “I just recruited my first round of endodontists two weeks ago,” Wisher said. “They can’t believe we have a dang microscope!” “Last year, we performed 8,000+ procedures on 674 patients, and a third of them probably needed some sort of endo,” Wisher adds. “Our patients have major chronic illnesses that are not well managed. They’re adults past the phase of prevention. The only other solution for them is extraction.” "It’s hard for our partnering endodontists to do endo on one tooth when there’s a million other things that are wrong too. I can
call a doctor any day for a crown, but the root canals were the problem. If someone needs three RCTs and had a plaque index of 80% or higher, we can’t send them anywhere unless they could pay for it.” The expanded care is already producing results. “I had one 25-year-old patient who needed three root canals and was super motivated and changed his home care by leaps and bounds,” Wisher says excitedly about the impact of the clinic’s education efforts. “There was no way I could have referred him out.” For another patient in her mid- 40s who needed two RCTs, several extractions and an upper partial, Wake Smiles secured a prosthodontist for the partial and an endodontist who did the two root canals because they were part of an abutment.
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