Dental Management and Cancer Therapy

[shazie]

Tell your dentist about your ANC count (at least 1.0 K before dental treatment) and platelet (at least 50 K before dental treatment) before undergoing dental treatment.

meals-to-heal.com/blog/dent...

More on HU:

healthunlocked.com/cllsuppo....

Also:

healthunlocked.com/cllsuppo...

[Cllcanada Top Poster CURE Hero]

I open my mouth for any dental work, I'm on antibiotics... before and after...

[shazie in reply to Cllcanada]

Is this a recommendation to everyone else as well?

[AussieNeil Administrator in reply to shazie]

Depends primarily on your ANC.

[Cllcanada Top Poster CURE Hero in reply to AussieNeil]

I have never been neutropenic... even during treatment...just luck perhaps... but IgG levels matter also...

Dental antibiotics varies from country to country, but I have been to a number of dentists and two dental surgeons in Canada and all have insisted on antibiotics...for CLL... the dential surgeons have both consulted with my hemetologist, and on one occasion my bloodwork was two months old, so I had another CBC prior to dental surgery...

Sepsis kills CLL patients ... don't take the risk...

I like this site on neutopenia...

neutropenia.ca/about/what-i...

[AussieNeil Administrator in reply to shazie]

Video on Neutropenic Sepsis:

healthunlocked.com/cllsuppo...

Definitely not the kind of thing you'd want to tackle with coffee enemas, warm lemon water, dry skin brushes or drinking herbal teas

Neil

[AussieNeil Administrator]

Thanks for including the links to the other posts on dental work Shazie. Everyone should read them. The first referenced article primarily relates to the dental treatment of cancer patients around the time they are having chemotherapy treatment which lowers their immunity. With CLL, our immunity is permanently impacted, (more so for some of us than others), so the first article is relevant to us all of the time.

Don't expect your dentist to be familiar with the impact of your ANC and platelet levels on your degree of risk - get your specialist involved! You may be provided with a script for prophylactic antibiotics - after all, the need to urgently see a dentist can happen at any time.

Neil

[rover1]

what is 50K

[AussieNeil Administrator in reply to rover1]

50k is short for a count of 50,000 platelets (normal range 150,000 to 450,000 or thereabouts) in the USA or 50 in most of the rest of the world (normal range 150 to 450). With CLL, you are unlikely to have a count of under 50 unless you've had treatment, as one of the trigger points for treatment is platelets falling below 70 (or 70,000 or 70k).

Neil

[rover1]

thank you Doug