Tales from the Tooth - Insights into Veterinary Dentistry

Ever wonder what it's like to navigate the fascinating world of veterinary dentistry? This compelling conversation with our guest editors, Dr. Elke Pollaris and Dr. Stephanie Goldschmidt, promises to enlighten you. We'll dissect the intricate details of the December JAVMA dentistry supplement, exploring an array of topics from equine dentistry to common dental pathologies, and even exciting new treatment possibilities. For all animal lovers and veterinarians out there, we've got you covered on the importance of oral health in all species and how you can seamlessly incorporate dentistry into your practice. This episode is your chance to gain a comprehensive understanding of veterinary dentistry and pick up some gold standard recommendations for your cherished patients.

But there's more to the story! Join us as we delve into personal anecdotes and experiences with Elke and Stephanie. You'll hear about fun moments sprinkled amidst a serious discussion about the pivotal role of oral health in animals. Get a taste of the exciting articles featured in the December dentistry supplement on the journals' website or in the print supplemental issue. Don't miss this opportunity to step into the shoes of veterinary dentists and understand the world of dentistry from their perspective.

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Transcript

Sarah Wright: 0:00

You're listening to Veterinary Vertex, a podcast of the AVMA Journals. In this episode we discuss the December JAVMA dentistry supplement with our guest editors Drs. Elke Pollaris and Stephanie Goldschmidt.

Lisa Fortier: 0:19

Welcome to Veterinary Vertex. I'm Editor-in-Chief Lisa Fortier, and I'm joined by Associate Editor Sarah Wright. Today, we have Elke and Stephanie joining us. Elke and Stephanie, thank you so much for being here with us today.

Elke Pollaris: 0:32

Thank you, happy to be here.

Stephanie Goldschmidt: 0:34

Good morning. I'm Dr. Stephanie Goldschmidt. Thank you for having me on this podcast. I'm really excited to be able to have been a guest editor for this issue and work with Dr. Elke to bring you kind of a comprehensive overview of dentistry.

Sarah Wright: 0:47

Thank you so much, Stephanie. We're so excited to have you and Dr. Elke. All right, let's dive right in. So, Stephanie, you're one of our guest editors for the December JAVMA dentistry supplement. What can our readers expect to learn from this special supplemental issue?

Stephanie Goldschmidt: 1:01

Yeah, so we tried to focus on how do we kind of tackle these really challenging issues right now. So how does a general practitioner make gold standard recommendations for some of the more difficult things they might come into contact with, For example, how to decide when to use antibiotics, how to decide what stage you're going to offer for oral tumors, et cetera? So we're hoping to give a nice overview of kind of all of the variety of oral diseases we can see and how to make those best recommendations in practice.

Elke Pollaris: 1:31

Well, for me, I think they can expect some really nice manuscripts about common dental pathology in equines, like equine or the plastic tooth, resorption and hypercementosis, the dental infections causing sinusitis, information about peripheral caries and even much more, and these are topics that definitely deserve some attention. And in the articles there are also guidelines on how these conditions can be diagnosed, classified and even managed or treated, so they're a good guide for clinicians who do dentistry.

Sarah Wright: 2:06

That's excellent. I was just telling Lisa, before you jumped on, that I didn't even realize there were dentists that specialized in equine. That's so cool and so important for our field and, as I mentioned, dentistry is such an important topic for our patients. How did you identify topics for the dentistry supplement?

Elke Pollaris: 2:24

It's definitely an important medical topic in which we as veterinarians can play a very important role in even improving the welfare of our animals, and it was very difficult to select specific topics, because even every sub-discipline in this dentistry is worth mentioning, of course. But for this occasion I really wanted to have a mix of new, exciting and promising treatment possibilities, like endodontics in horses, but to also put it in a spotlight, that's also the management and housing of our horses can have an impact on their oral health. But as much fun as it is to read about new developments, it is also important to emphasize that our growing elderly population of horses also still needs attention and that their oral health cannot be neglected just because they're old. So geriatric dentistry for me is definitely also a very important subject. That is in the dentistry supplement of December.

Lisa Fortier: 3:21

That's a really great way to summarize it, Elke. You know I graduated over 30 years ago and the two I would say the two biggest things that I've seen in my lifetime are ivermectin and dentistry. You know it used to be we just went out and routinely floated and then wow, and the power float came out. That was really fun. So I think the approach to like oral care it's not just floating teeth, but it's fascinating when you get a real equine specialist dentist to look at and how they approach it and how do you help people. How do you see opportunities for veterinarians to implement this newer, I would say, approach to dentistry in their practice?

Elke Pollaris: 4:03

There are tons of opportunities. I think veterinarians, when they do an annual visit with the horse for you know their vaccination they can ask the owner like hey, do you also check your horse's teeth? Because, just like us, they need to go to the dentist to see if everything is okay in the mouth. But also whenever a horse is not eating well, losing weight, having colic, had an esophageal obstruction, these are all occasions to ask about the oral health of the horse because, although it's often not the primary cause of these general health problems, it can definitely contribute to them also.

Elke Pollaris: 4:45

For example, when a horse has a unilateral nasal discharge, again this is a very important moment to check if there is not an underlying tooth problem present causing this infection. And of course I'm now talking about horses because I'm an equine dental specialist, but actually this goes for all animal species. It is, for example, very well known that also other herbivores like alpacas, llamas, sheep, goats, bovines and, of course, much more animal species can have tooth problems, and not only for our you know more pet-like bovines and herbivores. But I also believe that the producing bovines, for example, if they are not eating well because they have tooth pain, also their production will decrease because, yeah, they are having pain, and when you have pain, you will also perform less well.

Stephanie Goldschmidt: 5:42

So I mostly personally thought about what I would want to know and what I think is really impactful right now for general practitioners. So we tried to do kind of a wide breadth of the types of diseases we see so oral cancer, oral medicine, complicated fractures, clefs. We also then have a rabbit issue as well. So we tried to choose a breath to have kind of one author who we knew was a specialist in that topic kind of give us an overview of how we should be practicing that specific kind of slice of the pie for dentistry. So that's what I thought about when I thought about topics and who best to reach out to.

Lisa Fortier: 6:21

Yeah, Stephanie, as you've said, dentistry is like every specialty right. There are super specialized vets and then things that we can really implement into daily practice. Where do you see as the biggest opportunities for veterinarians to implement dentistry in their practice?

Stephanie Goldschmidt: 6:37

Yeah, that's great. So I really think that kind of the first thing for veterinarians to tackle in practice would be periodontal disease, which is by far the most common, but I actually think most people are doing that very well. So then the next step is starting to think about how do I kind of look at these more complex options and how can I do the first steps before referring. And I personally think that a lot of times dentistry because it is something that maybe we're not taught as well People are very quick to refer and I think that there's a lot more in practice that they could be doing the beginning even of these super specialized cases starting with the work up, making those recommendations, talking to the client about what might happen when they refer, and kind of using that as that next step past periodontal disease management.

Lisa Fortier: 7:22

Yeah, that's such a great take home message, stephanie. I think that's true for every specialty. It's become an increasing trend. You know like practitioners barely want to touch anything that has an ACL against sent immediately for a TPLO and that might not be an option for or the right thing for every patient and every scenario and every pocket book. So really good information. What did you learn from being as a guest editor in this dental supplement?

Stephanie Goldschmidt: 7:49

Yeah, it was really fun to be on the other side and kind of see the information that was coming in. I think for me, because I am kind of more subspecialized, getting to see other experts opinions and how they make the recommendations to general practitioners was really exciting. How they present that information and kind of say, well, this is why I do it this way and this is my experience especially particularly I do very little exotic, so reading about how to manage rabbit abscesses was actually a big learning experience for me, so that was great.

Elke Pollaris: 8:21

I'm very happy to see the interest in dentistry specifically being. My experience as a guest editor is seeing from a clone's range how much time is spent behind the scenes to get an issue of a journal ready in time. So I think Dr. Fortier and Dr. Wright and everyone else involved, Many congratulations on pulling this off for every addition. So, because it's really a lot of hard work for you guys.

Sarah Wright: 8:48

It is crazy how much work goes into putting an issue together and I didn't realize that either. You know, as an author, you work obviously with the editorial office to make sure that everything runs smoothly, with peer review etc. But then on the other side you're actually seeing the whole submission process from start to finish and even into production too. So really proud of our team. It's amazing what we've accomplished and really excited to bring this issue to our readers as well and to those of you who are just joining us on the podcast we're chatting with our guest editors about the JAVMA dentistry supplement. So you're a European veterinary specialist in equine dentistry. How did your advanced training prepare you to be a guest editor for this supplement?

Elke Pollaris: 9:29

Well, my training itself was, of course, a bit more focused on the practical part in dentistry, but you do get acquainted a little bit with research. During my PhD project I got more in touch with part of me that really likes doing research and stimulates the research, and I think it's mainly that during this training period that you get to know a lot of people like, for example, I got to know our other guest editor, Dr. Goldschmidt, for example. And I think one of the best things in dentistry because it's a new field, or a relatively new field still, especially in large animals is that in general, most specialists are easy to get in touch with and also really willing to share their expertise, which also makes it more easy to reach out to people to, example, write a review article for an edition like this.

Stephanie Goldschmidt: 10:22

What's been nice for me is not only do I specialize in veterinary dentistry, but I have a quite a strong research background. So throughout my residency I was trained in performing research and did a number of publications, and then, since moving to more of a tenure track at Davis, I do have a pretty strong research background, which I think gave me a nice insight into how to make sure that the information that others were writing was something that was presented in a clear and concise way. But then also, because I'm an educator, thinking about how do we make a global oversight of what I really want general practitioners and first aid practitioners to know, right Like what do I think really needs to be added to the literature for these more complex cases, so they can feel ready boots hitting the ground? So I think my training and experiences kind of set me up to be a good position for that.

Sarah Wright: 11:14

What is one piece of information you would like veterinarians to know about the December JAVMA dentistry supplemental issue?

Elke Pollaris: 11:22

I think I'm not going to pick really like one article or one manuscript, because they're all really worth reading. I think that the one thing I would really like to emphasize on is that dentistry in animals is much more than doing a deterration in the teeth of dogs and cats or to float teeth in horses. But that is really worth evaluating the oral health of our animals and to perform a thorough oral examination and only after you really have major diagnosis then start thinking about your treatment and other management advice that you can give. And I think if everyone starts thinking more bit in that direction and considering a good oral health as a part of a healthy animal, that would really benefit the welfare of our animals.

Stephanie Goldschmidt: 12:11

I think that one important piece of information to know is that it's just a great oversight into kind of these more challenging complexes and can help us kind of answer some of those more difficult questions. So I know it can be hard sometimes to say, well, we're doing this because we've always done it that way, and a lot of the articles actually we can say, well, we're doing it because we found that this is what we see, this is what eosinophilic granulomas are doing in cats, this is how often we actually will find meds when we spend the money to do thoracic radiographs. So I think it's a lot of really practical information that can be immediately changed our clinical outlook, which is the kind of research I think all of us want to do right Research that then we can say, hey, this review article changed how a general practitioner or a specialist changed the way they practice.

Lisa Fortier: 13:01

Yeah, thank you again. I'm so excited for everybody to get their hands on this and read it. I do think it's going to transform a lot of practices. You got you and okay did just an amazing job. That's a perfect wrap up. To get to where you are European train, equine, dentist, PhD, veterinarian you really have to have resilience and determination. Where do you think your grit came from?

Elke Pollaris: 13:33

That's actually a very difficult question. I think you really need to love what you're doing. For me, it was already since I was a kid that I really wanted to become a vet, and I also grew up in it a bit because both of my parents are also veterinarians, so I didn't know what I was getting into. And really being specifically about dentistry, I think I just really love my profession a lot and it makes worthwhile to make all those long hours, and when I see the really positive evolution in dentistry, that just makes me really happy.

Lisa Fortier: 14:07

Yeah, you clearly love what you do. We have such a great profession. It's always such a great take home message and fun to be around other people who love what they do. We're really blessed to be equine or just veterinarians in general, and both of you we've already asked, okay, this question, so I'll direct it to you now. You know, as you alluded to, you have research training, you're an educator, and then we come to you guys and say, hey, can you take on this extra role gratuitously? And you did, and that takes resilience or grit, or determination, and where do you think you got your determination from?

Stephanie Goldschmidt: 14:41

So I think that I've just always been a quite like enthusiastic and determined person and I think personally, especially with dentistry being such a novel specialty, I have a lot of personal kind of skin in the game, that I really want to push forward that knowledge and make sure that we are getting day one practitioners ready from vet schools and I think that just kind of all the experiences I've been through kind of going through residency, going through being a sole clinician for a while at the University of Minnesota just helped make me someone that really just wants to keep pushing forward and I think the positive feedback from having that resilience and grit kind of feeds you wanting to do more and more that is very true.

Lisa Fortier: 15:26

It's self fulfilling and rewarding, but you have to get through the bumps too, so well done. As we wind down the podcast a little bit, we ask a little more personal question, and for you, we'd like to ask what is the first concert you attended?

Stephanie Goldschmidt: 15:41

So that's a fun question. My first concert was no doubt I was my brother, so it was like a very big deal that we got to go and see Gwen Stefani in person, so that was a very fun experience for me, I must admit that I'm not 100% sure, so I still consider myself as a very young person, but now I'm feeling that I'm getting a little bit older, since I need to think about it.

Elke Pollaris: 16:05

so so long. But I actually think that it was a concert of Christina Aguilera.

Sarah Wright: 16:12

I used to have her CDs when I was growing up. Definitely a teen influence, for sure. So thank you so much, Elke and Stephanie. We just really appreciate you being here today.

Stephanie Goldschmidt: 16:26

Thank you so much for having us. It was a great experience.

Elke Pollaris: 16:29

You're welcome, thank you.

Sarah Wright: 16:31

And to our listeners. You can read the manuscripts in the December Dentistry Supplement on our journal's website or in the print supplemental issue. I'm Dr. Sarah Wright with Dr. Lisa Fortier and we want to thank each of you for joining us on this episode of the Veterinary Vertex Podcast. We love sharing cutting edge veterinary research with you and we want to hear from you. Be sure to leave us a rating and review on Apple Podcasts or whatever platform you listen to.