Dental Care Before Cancer Surgery Might Be Good Idea

Patients undergoing major cancer surgery might reduce their risk of complications by seeing a dentist beforehand, a study from Japan suggests.

Patients who visited a dentist were slightly less likely to have post-surgery pneumonia or die within 30 days of surgery, the study authors found.

“I think these findings are interesting. However, while statistically significant, one has to wonder how clinically relevant they are because the differences are – on an absolute scale – quite small,” said Dr. Quoc-Dien Trinh, co-director of the Dana-Farber and Brigham and Women’s Prostate Cancer Program in Boston. Trinh, who wasn’t involved with this study, has researched pneumonia after major cancer surgery.

“The authors correctly point out that unmeasured confounders may have influenced their results,” Trinh told Reuters Health by email.

Source: REUTERS HEALTH NEWS AUGUST