How dental hygienists can leverage AI for better patient care

If a picture is worth 1000 words, how many words is an even better picture worth?

As a dental hygienist, you know how hard it can be to convince some patients to improve their oral hygiene. Despite your clinical expertise, many patients fail to accept that things they think are “normal,” like seeing blood when they brush their teeth, are signs of periodontal disease that may need professional treatment.

What if you could have a reliable, unbiased, easily understandable source of evidence at hand to back you up in these cases?

AI technology can provide that evidence.

Telling a better story

One of the difficulties in getting patients to understand the significance of periodontal disease is that it ranges in severity. Because early stages can be managed with diligent oral hygiene, patients with a previous diagnosis of gingivitis may not accept that a transition to periodontitis means that clinical treatment is needed.

X-rays can be used to show progressive tissue and bone damage, but many patients struggle to see differences in shading on x-rays. AI technology can paint a more compelling picture of oral disease by:

• Enhancing x-rays with color to clarify the different types of oral structures, their relationship to each other, and degrees of pathology
• Labeling findings—such as bone height—with percentages to indicate level of deterioration

By enhancing x-rays in ways that make them clearer to patients, AI dental systems can augment your chairside patient education efforts and help you improve case acceptance, enabling you to provide needed care to more patients.

Beyond x-rays

AI can help you make the most of your time with patients in other ways, too. For example, AI can search your practice’s PMS and give you an automatic summary of your daily schedule to show you:

• Which patients are due for x-rays
• Which patients have unscheduled treatment plans
• Which patients may have oral disease with no treatment plan

These essential notes help you plan your day without the need for a manual chart audit and can support dialogue with patients during their appointment.

Improving teamwork

The power of AI’s “second opinion” on patient x-rays can also streamline communication between you and your doctors by helping assure diagnostic and treatment accuracy, thereby:

• Lessening stress
• Increasing confidence around diagnosis and treatment
• Minimizing “guesswork” in assessing pathologies
• Enabling efficient treatment of areas of concern

As Sheela Roth, director of clinical operations at Pearl, puts it:

"Hygienists are imperative to a practice's success, and during the many years I've worked in dentistry, I've experienced the excitement and stressors of the job. From tackling the demands of providing exceptional care to ensuring patient information is accurate -- all while allaying patients' fears and advocating for their needs -- the job requires that we wear many hats."

Explore the following resources for additional insight into the value of dental AI:

AI is revolutionizing the dental industry by reducing hygienist burnout

Support your clinical knowledge with proven AI technology

Pearl is a global dental AI leader assisting dentists across six continents with robust clinical pathology detection.

Get acquainted with Pearl here.

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