This interactive course will take oral pathology, oral medicine and oral radiology from your chair to the bench and back to the chair. As periodontists, we often recognize initial changes in oral tissues. With the assistance and collaboration with our specialty colleagues we can best treat and protect patients. Our speakers will review common oral pathologies, biopsy techniques, histologic reporting and applicable clinical management. With a report, now how do you manage the patient in the chair from detection to therapies available toda? Which lesions can be treated, controlled, or cured. They will also review the medicolegal implications of management and reporting.

The impact of periodontal inflammation and its treatment produces varying effects on systemic diseases. The first section will present how periodontal inflammation induces insulin resistance via low-grade inflammation. Thus, periodontal treatment towards these subjects would help life-style intervention, leading to improved insulin sensitivity by the mechanism independent of direct effect driven by resolution of inflammation. 

The second section will present new and compelling evidence that bacteria, viruses, and their products found in dental plaque may invade the brain where they may be a key early triggering event in Alzheimer’s Disease, as well as other forms of cognitive impairment/dementia.  These include the most up-to-date results from ongoing and completed clinical trials that target these pathogens. The practitioner will learn how these important new developments can be used in a “personalized dentistry” approach to their patients with or at risk for dementia.