Easing the Pain
The most effective treatment for dental care is already in your medicine cabinet
No patient should go home in pain. Starting with my very first days in dentistry in the U.S. Navy nearly 20 years ago, I have been dedicated to helping those in my care heal in comfort.
No patient should go home in pain.
Yet easing acute pain should not create new risks for patients. Regrettably, our opioid epidemic continues to claim more than 100 American lives every day, according to the National Institutes of Health.
There is a better way. By looking anew at more than 450 published studies from the last 30 years, my collaborators and I found that the combination of drugs such as ibuprofen with acetaminophen or other nonsteroidal anti- inflammatory drugs is more effective for pain—and safer— than opioids.
Our findings were published in the Journal of the American Dental Association and became news worldwide, featured in The New York Times and other prominent media outlets.
Still, our work is not done. We hope health care providers and patients all over the world will act on the findings.
Together, we can reduce the pain our patients experience without creating new risks—and hopefully save lives in the process.
—Anita Aminoshariae, Associate Professor of Endodontics