How can I prepare my teeth for chemotherapy?
Are you preparing your teeth for chemotherapy? You may not think that your teeth should be treated before cancer treatment, but it can really help. Chemotherapy can cause mouth sores because its intended to kill rapidly growing cells, such as cancer cells. Some healthy cells in your body also divide and grow rapidly, including the cells that line the inside of your mouth. Unfortunately these healthy cells are also damaged by chemotherapy and radiation. Damage to the cells in your mouth makes it difficult for your mouth to heal itself and to fend off germs, leading to sores and infections. Author and cancer survivor, Robin McGee explains how you can help prevent this from happening in this video.
Video Transcripts
Robin McGee: If you are let’s say a rectal cancer patient and you are going to be going in for chemotherapy or a colon cancer patient, your surgery is done, you are going to go off for chemotherapy, go to the dentist. Oh, what a thought, you got to go to the dentist because I learned this later, dentist apparently has special skills that they can either do the work that you require or they can buff your teeth in a certain way that will minimize the risk of mouth sores. The kinds of chemotherapy that people with colorectal cancer get are really are known to create mouth sores and if you have correct dental care before you enter chemoradiation or before you go for chemo, it will significantly reduce the likelihood of you developing them very, very difficult and often even debilitating symptoms, so go to the dentist and let that dentist know what you are up against and that can really assist in avoiding side effects.
Latest posts by Robin McGee (see all)
- How Can I Get Involved in Colon Cancer Advocacy? - January 1, 1970
- What Robin McGee Has Learned as Colon Cancer Advocate - January 1, 1970
- How Do Women Regain Sexual Function After Colon Cancer? - January 1, 1970
