Tooth and ENT Doctor

I don't believe in superstitions. I know that everything happens for a purpose according to how the Lord works in our lives. I am therefore considering this incident as just amazingly coincidental. When I was young, I had this red t-shirt that I loved to wear. What made it memorable to me is that, in most, if not all, of the accidents I had encountered then, I was surprisingly wearing that shirt. Of course, I dismissed the association and I kept on wearing it. I don't know what happened to it and I have had other red shirts after that but nothing 'bad' happened when I wore them. I mentioned in the previous post that I had a scheduled excision of gum mass, which I thought was a squamous papilloma, last Friday. As I have had experience with this kind of mass, I thought it would just be a simple excision under local anesthesia to be done in the clinic. I reassured the patient that the procedure will be short and unremarkable. I had a plan on how to simply detach t...

A colleague in the practice of dental medicine referred to me a 40-year old female with a large pinkish, cauliflower-like mass on her lower right buccal gingival. It apparently started 2 months prior to the consult as a small pinkish pedunculated mass, nontender, that was often irritated during teeth brushing. She wanted it removed. Without biopsy, the characteristic of the mass is more consistent with squamous papilloma. I scheduled her for excision biopsy under local anesthesia. More and more people are experiencing some ‘growths’ in their oral cavity. I think this is mainly related to the lifestyle we have adapted these years. Smoking, eating food with irritants or preservatives etc. are the usual culprits. For information, these are the more common growths and tumors that we usually see in the oral cavity. Please be guided and consult your dentists if you notice something similar in your mouth. Abscess This is a soft, pus containing swelling. Th...

My former classmate in elementary referred his father to me for evaluation and management because of two-months history of hoarseness and nonproductive cough. He has a 30 pack-years smoking history but apparently had quit smoking a few months earlier. He denied chest pain and dysphagia. On laryngoscopy, the left vocal fold was paralyzed. No laryngeal mass noted. I requested for a computed tomography (CT) scan of the neck and chest and a 6 x 7 cm mass was noted at the left hilar area. I referred him for CT scan guided biopsy of the mass. This is the normal vocal fold movements. Unilateral vocal cord paralysis occurs secondary to dysfunction of the recurrent laryngeal or vagus nerve innervating the larynx. Patients typically present with a fairly sudden onset of a “breathy” voice because of incomplete adduction of the paralyzed vocal cord. In addition, the patient may complain of his or her “voice going away” and shortness of breath. Normally, upon speaking, both vocal cords addu...

When I saw this video, I remembered the countless times I removed different kinds of insect in the ears of a lot of people at the Jose Reyes Medical Center's Emergency Room. These were the cases that we usually attended to especially in the wee hours of the morning, with patients claiming "something" crawled up in their ear while they were sleeping. I have removed cockroaches, wasps, moths and even worms! I remember one case where a mentally challenged individual was brought to us complaining of movements inside his ear, and on otoscopy and endoscopy, we saw several moving "fruit" worms in his middle ear! We had to bring him to the operating room to put him under sedation to be able to remove the worms. A colleague of mine reported once that he removed several live and feeding ticks in 2 sisters who had a shihtzu sharing their bed. He also had an experience of removing live maggots in the one ear canal which burrowed in the middle ear! It may be so "gros...

Last Saturday, I attended a lecture/workshop on mini dental implants. I have some experience in oral reconstruction so I just wanted to reinforce my knowledge regarding tooth replacement and prosthesis stabilization. It was a short but concise lecture/workshop, enough to get me fired up to include placement of dental implants in my clinical practice. If you have heard about tooth implants and considering to have one, here are some notes you might want to know. 1. What is implanted is a piece of a 'screw' like titanium metal which will serve as the root for a fabricated artificial crown. This is contrary to some notions that a whole new 'tooth' is implanted in the edentulous area. 2. It does not require a general anesthesia for the dentist to place the implants. Instead, a local infiltration around the area will suffice. 3. More often than not, especially if it's a single mini implant, no incisions or flaps are made. Therefore, there is less bleeding and le...

To wrap up the ‘quit smoking’ series, it is best to remember the following: 1. Don't be discouraged if you slip up and smoke one or two cigarettes. It's not a lost cause. One cigarette is better than an entire pack. But that doesn't mean you can safely smoke every now and then, no matter how long ago you quit. One cigarette may seem harmless, but it can quickly lead back to one or two packs a day. Many ex-smokers had to try stopping many times before they finally succeeded. When people slip up, it's usually within the first three months after quitting. Here's what you can do if this happens: Understand that you've had a slip. You've had a small setback. This doesn't make you a smoker again. Don't be too hard on yourself. One slip up doesn't make you a failure. It doesn't mean you can't quit for good. Don't be too easy on yourself either. If you slip up, don't say, "Well, I've blown it. I might as w...