The University Hospital of Torrevieja has incorporated a new dental hygienist to the Dentistry Unit of three dentists and two hygienists.
The Unit attends to more than 12,000 patients a year, there is a specific unit for special patients and it performs a high-resolution approach that avoids unnecessary travel for users.
The centre has incorporated new state-of-the-art operating room equipment that will facilitate the work of professionals, improving technical equipment.
The Unit for Patients with Special Needs provides comprehensive care to those patients with neurological or behavioural disorders, who due to their medical or behavioural conditions prevent their management in the usual consultation. It includes conservative treatments for permanent dentition caries, preventive treatments such as dental hygiene and fluoride application, as well as surgical treatments such as extractions, when necessary. The interventions are generally performed on an outpatient basis.
Carmen Salinas, Coordinator of the Torrevieja University Hospital Dentistry Service, points out that “patients with special needs cannot always be treated with local anaesthesia in a conventional consultation, so the unit has a perfectly equipped operating room. The simplest procedures can be complex for this type of user, in this way they can opt for the same treatments as the rest of the population without any problem”.
The Department of Health of Torrevieja has a network of oral care points in the Health Centre of Guardamar del Segura, Health Centre of La Loma, as well as in the University Hospital of Torrevieja itself, it has recently incorporated this service in the centre of health of Pilar de la Horadada. In them, in addition to care for children, adult patients are treated for extractions, early detection of malignant lesions and diseases of the oral mucosa.
Attention to pregnant women will be resumed shortly, for the prevention of oral diseases during pregnancy. These infrastructures allow quality hospital dentistry to be carried out, being able to attend in the same service to patients with multiple pathologies, oncology and with pathology of the temporomandibular joint.
The team collaborates closely with maxillofacial surgery, speech therapy, paediatrics, midwives and other department services for multidisciplinary patient care.
In terms of children’s oral health, the portfolio of services includes the prevention of oral diseases, attention to dental trauma, extractions, early diagnosis of dental malocclusion and conservative treatments in permanent dentition up to 14 years of age.
The promotion of oral health and prevention of caries and oral hygiene is carried out in all schools and special education centres in the department, as well as in pregnant patients who are instructed in the prevention of oral diseases, both for them as for the future baby.
Pilar Santos, Manager of the Department of Health of Torrevieja, “our Dentistry Unit is doing an exceptional job in the oral treatment of our patients, focusing its efforts on primary prevention and on the transversal approach of dental pathology”.
