3 quick veterinary dentistry hacks from Jan Bellows

Jan Bellows, DVM, DAVDC, DABVP, FAVD shared 3 key tips and tricks for veterinary dentistry from his lecture "40+ Dental Hacks" presented at Fetch dvm360® Conference in Kansas City, Missouri. Tips included intraoral photography, follow-up for anesthesia patients, and a go-to product for stopping bleeding.

A partial transcript of the interview is below. View the video for more of the discussion.

Jan Bellows, DVM: One of the big [dental hacks] is using your cell phone for a lot of things. So, we use the cell phone to take pictures of the mouth inside the exam room. Then we print out the picture, we edit the picture on our cell phone, and we print that out. We also use the cell phone for intraoral images of the pathology. And also for the dental X-ray, we take a picture of the dental X-ray, and we text both of them to the client while their patients under anaesthetic. Then we ask for permission to take out the tooth that needs to come out. But we beforehand prepare the client that we're going to call [them] later [and] we're going to tell [them] what the problem is. The go home point is animals that come in for dentistry, there's something going on with the mouth. The odor is not normal. If it doesn't smell like roses, there's periodontal disease; there's a pocket there. And their goal, our goal, is to eliminate the pocket and especially we have to eliminate pockets by taking out teeth sometimes, but we need permission before we do that.