Dentists Could Provide The First Line Of Defense For America’s Health

Dentists may be the un-utilized answer to America’s health care woes.

Trips to the dentist could include some basic primary screening of patients.

It seems that people will forgo trips to their primary care physicians in a tight economy but trips to the dentists remain a high priority to consumers of health care.

Dentists could perform such primary care as blood pressure monitoring and blood screening for high cholesterol and diabetes; catching symptoms early.

Based on those findings, the researchers determined that 26 percent of U.S. children did not see a general health care provider (physician, physician assistant, nurse, nurse practitioner), but more than one-third (7 million) of those children did visit a dentist at least once in 2008.

One-quarter of U.S. adults did not visit a general health care provider, but nearly a fourth (13 million) of those adults visited a dentist at least once in 2008.

Eighty-five percent of the adults and 93 percent of the children had health insurance. This suggests that many of those who did not see a general health care provider may have had access to general care, but chose not to seek it, the researchers said.

New Guidelines for Breast Cancer Screening Considered Unsafe By Women

Breast Cancer Guidelines are being amended and there is some concern.

The greatest health fear for many women is breast cancer disease.

One in eight women do develop breast cancer, however, women perceive the risk to be much higher.

So much so, as a matter of fact, that they are concerned about the new guidelines limiting early cancer screening for breast cancer.

More than eight out of 10 women say new guidelines recommending against routine breast cancer screening of women under 50 are “unsafe,” according to a small survey.

But most of the women also grossly overestimate their risk of developing the disease, researchers from the University of Massachusetts Medical School in Worcester found.

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