In the past month, our phones have been lighting up with strong interest from the press, eager to learn more about the business of House Call Dentistry.   As a result, we have gained recognition with media and print outlets such as ABC News, NBC News, Exceptional Parent Magazine, and the San Francisco Chronicle.

 Please click the following link for the ABC story, narrated by Health Reporter Carolyn Johnson: http://abclocal.go.com/kgo/story?section=news/health&id=8339315.

 The other videos can be viewed from our website at http://www.housecalldentist.com.

 Dental Care. Delivered.

 Next month we will be the featured practice in the American Academy of House Call Physicians Digest! We are excited about the growth in this area of dentistry and look forward to being able to continue to educate dentists on why it is the right choice to start offering house calls in their own practices. 

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Why do we do House Call Dentistry and why should you care?

After we started receiving calls from patients who could no longer travel to see us, we realized that dental patients deserved a choice — the choice of receiving quality dental care, whether they came to us or we went to them.  With more and more evidence of poor dental health being linked to poor overall health (Seen Dr. Oz lately?), there is no longer a reason to delay providing a check-up to your loved one or patient.

 This is why we offer in-office and home visits for patients in the San Francisco Bay Area. 

 Most of the calls we receive are from the family members and caregivers of the frail, elderly, disabled, or those with special needs.   The reason being is that it’s nearly impossible to bring their loved ones in for a simple dental visit, even when they know that visit is necessary and long overdue. 

 Why is it so difficult to get a doctor or dentist to come to my home?

 We’re a bit surprised as well.  We initially stepped into this void for our patients when we began receiving calls from their caregivers and family members letting us know they could no longer leave their home for their dental appointments.  We recognized this as a tremendous calling to address access to care issues for hundreds of thousands of people in our country that have difficulty leaving home or need to rely on others to get them out of the house.  Our goals are your goals — Compassionate dental care for our patients and your loved ones.

 Guiding Principles:

 1.  We understand the complexity of taking off a day of work to drive your loved one to a dental appointment as well as the added stress of traffic jams or other delays.

 2.  We understand the health and safety risks of unecessesarily bringing a frail or elderly person out of their home — their anxiety, the increased risk for infection, the possibility of falling, or even the bruising or abscesses that can occur with basic transportation.

 3.  We believe house call visits offer insights not available during an office visit. During these visits, we learn more about a patient’s lifestyle, eating habits, their ability to take medicine and their forms of exercise.  We know that in their home, patients are much more relaxed, comfortable and willing to reveal their concerns. All of this helps lead to simplified and improved treatment plans.

 PLEASE SEND THIS MESSAGE TO ALL THE MEDICAL AND DENTAL PROFESSIONALS YOU KNOW.  IT IS TIME TO START EXPANDING THE PRACTICE OF HOUSE CALL MEDICINE.

Sincerely,

Dr. David Blende, D.D.S.

 www.drblende.com

www.housecalldentist.com

Proper dental care is a particularly critical issue for seniors. Many recent studies have confirmed that oral health is crucial to seniors’ overall physical and emotional well being. Yet physical difficulties and cognitive challenges like dementia often present formidable obstacles, keeping seniors from the dental care they need, particularly at assisted living communities, where shear numbers compound the problem.

Put simply, it is often extremely difficult, even prohibitively so, to get senior home residents to a dentist’s office, even in the case of emergencies or serious conditions that have long gone undetected.

In the San Francisco Bay Area, however, there is one dental practice dedicated to overcoming these barriers. House Call Dentist, a service of the San Francisco-based Blende Dental Group, brings high quality, compassionate dental care to the homes of special needs patients who can’t travel to a dentist.

How do I keep my wife’s teeth clean when she refuses my assistance?

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David Blende­, DDS
Expert Answer by David Blende, DDS

Dr. David Blende, DDS, has more than 20 years’ experience providing comprehensive dental care. His practice, the Blende Dental Group, serves the phobic, disabled, geriatric, and medically compromised communities through sleep dentistry. A division of his practice, Bay Area House Call Dentists, delivers dental services to senior communities and private homes in the San Francisco Bay Area.
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While not knowing the specifics of why your wife is refusing your efforts to brush her teeth, in general, there are a variety of reasons that people are not comfortable nor compliant having people other than themselves enter their mouths – the mouth is considered a very private area.

When we see patients that require their family members or caregivers to provide oral hygiene, the patient is often intellectually or physically challenged, or they just don’t believe they need to have their teeth cleaned.

What we do know is that the mouth can become a nest of infection when regular oral hygiene care is not maintained. Inflammation of the gums and possible abscesses occur. The bacteria in the mouth and enter the bloodstream, causing potential issues for the heart, lungs, and kidneys. It is imperative that those that want to experience long lives keep their mouth clean. In fact, one of the leading causes of death in elderly people is aspirant pneumonia and what happens in that particular situation is that that patient chokes on and/or inhales a certain amount of bacterial load that is present in the mouth because the mouth is not clean.

So what can you do to gain access to your wife’s mouth? With some of our patients, we cradle their head in our lap; we may sing them a song; we massage their face. Once a bit relaxed, we will work around to the inside of their mouth, possibly with a washcloth and we try to make the teeth cleaning as relaxing an experience as we can.

Another device that your dentist can give you is a soft bite pillow which you can put into your wife’s mouth and turn sideways. If your wife continues to bite on that, this will provide access to her mouth and you can then use a brush. I would encourage you not to use toothpaste because people tend to taste the toothpaste and that has the capacity to create a series of swallow reflexes. I would just use warm water and brush as vigorously as you can – primarily the root surfaces where the teeth enter the gums.

SAN FRANCISCO – Who likes going to the dentist? Taking the time to get there can be just as painful as whatever you need fixed, but that doesn’t have to be the case.

Dr. David Blende is with House Call Dentist, a team of doctors and nurses that serve California’s San Francisco Bay Area. He treats patients who can’t physically make it to his office, including many alzheimer’s patients.

“We take care of an awful lot of special needs patients with cerebral palsy, spectrum disorder, certainly Alzheimer’s, Downs Syndrome,” Dr. Blende said. “Anybody who is special needs and it’s just hard for them to comprehend a dental visit in a conventional office setting.”

Dr. Blende can offer much more than a simple exam during his house call. He can even perform X-rays. Bridget Byrne has been an in-home caregiver for 10 years.

She says dental house calls save her patient from a stressful journey to a dental office in nearby San Francisco.

“I think it’s less frightening for the patient, because they’re in a home surrounding,” she says, “and I think it’s a great idea.”

(Copyright © 2011 NBC Universal, All Rights Reserved)

The Nob Hill Gazette has just published their January 2011 issue and Bay Area House Call Dentists, a service of the Blende Dental Group are featured. Below is an excerpt of this article…

While most of emerging technology finds us eschewing the ways of olden days, one Bay Area dentist group is using it to return to an age-old practice: house calls. Several years ago, Dr. David Blende, founder of the Blende Dental Group, saw the need to provide such a service. Already well known for working with patients with special needs, Blende formed Bay Area House Call Dentists (BAHCD) in July 2009 to further this part of this practice. To provide such service, portable dental equipment is utilized to turn a home into a temporary dentist office. To date, BAHCD is one of the few groups to provide such a service in the area.

While this sounds like a luxury practice, it is actually, as indicated, aimed at helping the least-served populations—those for whom getting to the office is impossible or very difficult. This includes people with severe phobias, dementia, obesity, or Autism, and the elderly. As well as private home visits, BAHCD also regularly serves senior facilities. This is particularly important as lack of dental health can contribute to heart attacks, strokes, and pneumonia.

Click here to read the full article.

To read this and other press on the San Francisco Bay Area House Call Web Site, please visit http://www.bahcd.com.