インプラント療法に対する全人的なアプローチ
スポンサーリンク
概要
- 論文の詳細を見る
Health care has made a significant progress as science, and we dentists are required to make a full use of specialized techniques in the name of health care, when we treat patients. Implant therapy was once focused on restoration and improvement of chewing function itself, which was the major demand of patients until 1980s. With the advent of osseointegration, more functional implant therapy was devised, and together with development of bone augmentation procedures the range of indications was extended. Now aesthetic result can be achieved in anterior regions, and maintenance care can achieve the outcome with high predictability and long-term stability. Since the year 2000, immediate loading and immediate placement of implants have been added to acceptable alternatives, which have contributed to reduction of treatment period. A variety of patient's demands can be satisfied now. However when we dentists treat a patient who wandered into our clinics as a stray sheep, asking for implant therapy, we have to make efforts to understand the patient with full empathy for his/her pain, suffering or mental agony. If a dentist is too focused on specialized technique per se., he tends to pay attention to the mouth or the edentulous site in the mouth only, ignoring mental aspects of the patient, falling into a pitfall to try to use all possible techniques available with overconfidence in techniques. There is danger that he will fall into patient care without thorough communication with a patient. Clinicians should try to see the whole being of a patient including his/her family life, work, relatives, friends, pleasure, sorrow, hope and fear, as if he saw the impressionist's painting, rather than seeing a patient lying on dental equipment. Otherwise a dentist will not be able to see what is in the bottom of his/her mind as a person, and will not be able to provide care that can satisfy a patient as well as people around him/her. We should try to provide care, keeping in mind the patient's surroundings including his/her personality, life style, availability of time in a clinic, economic conditions as well as systemic health conditions, etc. In an attempt to consider what is the holistic approach to implant therapy based on my clinical experiences, I will introduce some cases in which I could fully grasp the patient's mind and achieve mutual satisfaction and other cases which I suspected of psychosomatic disorders, and were quite difficult for me to handle.
- 2004-10-25