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Supporting Your Practice

How Appropriate Is It to Prescribe Antibiotics for Endo Cases?

It’s the end of a long day at the dental office and an emergency patient shows up with a swelling. Your gut tells you it’s endodontic in origin and the temptation is to write a prescription for antibiotics and see the patient another day.

But is this an appropriate course of action? When should dentists prescribe antibiotics for endodontic cases?

In this edition of CDA Oasis Live, Dr. John O’Keefe, Director of Knowledge Networks CDA, welcomes Dr. Rodrigo Cunha, an endodontist from Winnipeg, to discuss his best practices in prescribing antibiotics for endodontic emergencies. Dr. Cunha stresses the importance of following published guidelines and highlights the clinical management of any emergency as a priority. He also expresses concern over the large number of antibiotics prescribed for patients with irreversible pulpitis, and shares his go-to antibiotic prescriptions of choice.

We hope you find the conversation useful. We welcome your thoughts, questions and/or suggestions about this post and other topics. Leave a comment in the box below or send us your feedback by email.

Until next time!
CDA Oasis Team

Resource

New Antibiotic Guidelines: Is There Anything Truly Novel?

 

Full Conversation (10.54")

3 Comments

  1. Ryan Cormack January 13, 2021

    Great video, very informative. Thanks Dr. Cunha!

    Reply
  2. JOHN PETERS January 13, 2021

    azythromycin is a very effective drug for gram positive aerobes and few gram negative anaerobes. Where as most endodontic infections are gram negative anaerobes consideration of this as a second antibiotic of choice should be reconsidered.

    Reply
  3. Dominika Szyling January 14, 2021

    Hi there! Why would you pick azythromycin over clindamycin? What is the ideal dosing schedule of azythromycin?

    Thank you!

    Reply

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