All About Jaw Fractures

Your jawbone is the biggest bone in the lower part of your face and it is commonly broken during facial trauma, with only noses getting broken more often. The lower jaw is medically referred to as the “mandible”, which acts as the foundation for your teeth.  Your teeth sit in the “Alveolar bone”  which is…

Eating After Wisdom Tooth Extraction

Categories: Blog, Extraction, Pain
'woman in pain after wisdom tooth extraction'

When it comes to getting your wisdom teeth pulled, you may be stressing about the long list of foods you can’t eat. Don’t worry – you won’t starve! We want your recovery to be as quick and painless as possible, so keep reading for an easy-to-follow guide to eating after your wisdom tooth removal! DONT’S…

Pediatric Facial Trauma

PediatricFaceTrauma

We’ve all had our share of trips, bumps, and even broken bones in our childhood years! (If you haven’t, then you’re very lucky!) As the saying goes, children are very resilient, and this is actually due to their biology. Children have “bendy bones” which are more likely to bend and crack under pressure rather than…

Dry socket anyone?

Dr Massoomi dry socket

  Dry socket! The most dreaded thing that most patients ask me during the consultation.  Everyone seemingly knows about dry socket.  What is dry socket?  Well, its really the inflammation of the bone in the extraction site, the bone that used to support the extracted tooth.  Typically when a tooth is extracted, a blood clot…

What’s the Medical Evidence that Supports Marijuana Use for Medical Indications?

Dr Massoomi Marijuana smokingjpg

  In the most recent edition of the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) these authors performed a review of the 79 studies that involved 6462 patients.  Conclusions: Moderate-quality evidence that cannabinoid use might benefit patients with chronic pain or muscle spasticity Low-quality evidence that marijuana use prevents nausea and vomiting secondary to cancer chemotherapy, leads to…

Beards and oral cancer!

Beards can be deceiving! As you all know this month is Oral Cancer Awareness month. Thankfully one of my many great patients has volunteered himself, as a cancer patient, to highlight the importance of routine oral cancer screenings. All we know beards are now somewhat of a fashion statement…but they can sometimes also be deadly. Unfortunately…

Extraction of wisdom teeth with just “infiltration”?

Categories: Pain, Wisdom Teeth
Photo Jan 01, 14 35 24

                  Recently at University of Pacific (UOP), one of my dental students brought up the topic of “infiltration” versus “nerve blocks” for the extraction of teeth – more specifically 3rd molars.  Wondering why are we still providing IAN (Inferior Alveolar Nerve) nerve blocks in the lower jaw…