How Your Mouth Could Infect Your Joints

Arthritis is a condition which comes in over 200 forms. Each affects the joints and each has generally similar symptoms. Swelling of the joints, chronic pain, steady loss of mobility and, if left untreated, the potential for deformity. Most forms of arthritis are manageable with the right combination of drugs and lifestyle changes but the condition is generally chronic. This means that once you have arthritis it’s unlikely you’re ever going to see the back of it which is why management is so important. Providing you keep on top of your symptoms, arthritis never has to strip you of your independence.

One form of treatment for arthritic patients is the implanting of prosthetic joints. Hips, knees or shoulders are the most commonly replaced joints and as they’re not living tissue they can’t suffer the effects of arthritis. Of course, having joint replacement surgery is a major procedure which comes with all the complications of such procedures and shouldn’t be taken lightly. Patients who’ve had these surgeries have shown greatly improved qualities of life and the treatments themselves are getting much safer and more advanced all the time.

There are additional concerns which those with prosthetic joints should be aware of. As the joints are effectively foreign entities in your bodies, it doesn’t take much for them to get infective and insight an immune reaction in the body. This could be very damaging to you and potentially cause you to need additional surgery. This is why doctors performing oral surgeries need to be so careful. The mouth is a great harbourer of bacteria and if those bacteria get into the blood, the chances are it’ll get to the prosthetic joints. This could lead to a transient infection which will put your life itself at risk!

Dentists will give you a huge dose of antibiotics before an oral surgery to prevent this from occurring. You’ll only need the one dose and this should protect you and prevent this bacterium from travelling freely through your blood!