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Did you know ? While cigarettes impact the respiratory tract, but also the entire oral sphere, dental surgeons today play an important role in cancer prevention and are authorized to prescribe smoking cessation treatments.
Your dentist can also help you quit smoking. If the link is not automatic in the minds of smokers, the French Union for Oral Health (UFSBD) recalls on the occasion of World No Tobacco Day that dental surgeons are today involved in the fight against cancer and can receive you for any questions on the subject of smoking cessation.
A look at the entire oral sphere
Thus, your dentist is above all a first-line health professional, who can act on the entire oral sphere. As such, he can of course treat your teeth and the effects of tobacco on your smile, but also detect the early signs of cancer of the aerodigestive tract, raise awareness of the risks of tobacco, advise and help patients in a process of smoking cessation. What few smokers know.
And the power to prescribe substitution treatments
Since 2016, the dental profession can therefore prescribe these nicotine replacement treatments (NRT), these first-line drug treatments recommended by the High Authority for Health. And since 2019, Health Insurance reimburses most nicotine substitutes prescribed by dental surgeons.
After a diagnosis and an interview with the smoking patient who wants help with weaning, the dentist can therefore prescribe NRT in the form of prolonged release: via patches/patches allowing a slow and constant supply of nicotine, or rapid release: such as chewing gum, lozenges/tablets, inhaler and mouth spray.
The UFSBD thus recalls that the support of a health professional increases the chances of a successful weaning process by 50 to 70%!