Depressed Woman, Tooth LossCheck your smile if you have been gloomy lately or have been missing on the social circuit. Tooth loss could be a potential reason for millions of people feeling depressed and cheerless. With nearly 20 million teeth being extracted each year, a large number of people deal with psychological effects of a tooth loss.

H. Asuman Kiyak PhD, will articulate about the psychological issues affecting people who deal with the loss of a tooth at the Academy of General Dentistry’s (AGD) 56th Annual Meeting and Exhibits in Orlando, Fla., July 16-20. Explaining how this loss can affect the quality of life, Dr Kiyak will also bring to light the trauma faced by patients post extraction of the tooth. In the course, “Enhancing the Oral Health and Quality of Life for Partially Edentulous or Fully Edentulous Patients: The Importance of Communication”, Dr Kiyak identifies the manner in which doctors can correspond to patients to enable them reinstate their smile.

Dr Kiyak remarked, “The major impact of tooth loss is on the appearance and social relations component of quality of life because people cannot change their appearance with missing teeth.”

More than 86 percent of general dentists accounted social embarrassment as a significant obstacle with more than half of the patients evading social gatherings in a recent survey distributed to nearly 20,000 AGD members. However Dr Kiyak insists on definite ways that patients can use to cope with this problem of tooth loss. Reviewing videos or still photos of patients who have lost teeth and the existing teeth status with removable or implant support dentures helps Dr Kiyak further weigh the pros and cons for endodontic treatment or teeth replacement that can help preserve a “Hopeless” tooth.

Your less than perfect smile could, thus is one of the crucial factors causing you to be downhearted. Dr Kiyak additionally mentions that dentures can help overcome the oral functioning as well as the psychological effects of a tooth loss.