SportsWater SportsUnique Dental Clinic

Service

Unique Dental Clinic is a full service dental clinic with trained staff and residents who provide care to medically compromised patients, inpatients and hospital staff members.

Dentists are doctors who specialize in oral health. Their responsibilities include:

• Diagnosing oral diseases.
• Promoting oral health and disease prevention.
• Creating treatment plans to maintain or restore the oral health of their patients.
• Interpreting x-rays and diagnostic tests.
• Ensuring the safe administration of anesthetics.
• Monitoring growth and development of the teeth and jaws.
• Performing surgical procedures on the teeth, bone and soft tissues of the oral cavity.

Dentists’ oversight of the clinical team is critical to ensuring safe and effective oral care. Even seemingly routine procedures such as tooth extractions, preparing and placing fillings or administering anesthetics carry potential risks of complications such as infection, temporary or even permanent nerve damage, prolonged bleeding, hematomas and pain.

A Team Approach

The team approach to dentistry promotes continuity of care that is comprehensive, convenient, cost effective and efficient. Members of the team include dental assistants, lab technicians and dental hygienists. Leading the team is the dentist, a doctor specializing in oral health who has earned either a Doctor of Dental Medicine (DMD) degree or a Doctor of Dental Surgery (DDS) degree, which are essentially the same.

The special attributes of the ancestral versions of these enzyme superfamlies, and the self-reinforcing feedback system they would have formed with the first genes and proteins, would have kick-started early biology and driven the first life forms toward greater diversity and complexity, the researchers said.

The widely accepted RNA-world theory posits that RNA – the molecule that today plays roles in coding, regulating, and expressing genes – elevated itself from the primordial soup of amino acids and cosmic chemicals, eventually to give rise first to short proteins called peptides and then to single-celled organisms.

Education and Clinical Training

The level of education and clinical training required to earn a dental degree, and the high academic standards of dental schools, are on par with those of medical schools and are essential to preparing dentists for the safe and effective practice of modern oral health care.

Most dental students have earned Bachelor of Science degrees or their equivalent, and all have passed rigorous admission examinations.

The curricula during the first two years of dental and medical schools are essentially the same — students must complete such biomedical science courses as anatomy, biochemistry, physiology, microbiology, immunology and pathology. During the second two years, dental students’ coursework focuses on clinical practice — diagnosing and treating oral diseases. After earning their undergraduate and dental degrees (eight years for most) many dentists continue their education and training. Some go on to achieve certification in one of nine recognized dental specialties.

Upon completing their training, dentists must pass both a rigorous national written examination and a state or regional clinical licensing exam in order to practice. As a condition of licensure, they must meet continuing education requirements for the remainder of their careers, to keep them up-to-date on the latest scientific and clinical developments.