Search:

• Home
• About Us
• Archives
  • Archive Help
  • Archive FAQ
  • Archive Pricing
• Advertise
• Contact Us
• Reporter’s Notebook

USC Dentists Turn Toothaches into Smiles

Many elementary school-age MUSD students have never had a dental check-up, say dentists.

By Elizabeth Hsing-Huei Chou, EGP Staff Writer

“Juan has just twenty teeth,” says Dentist Dr. Marjorie Domingo. But that’s typical for a first grader, she says.

What’s not typical is twelve of Juan Escovedo’s teeth have cavities on them. While kneeling down next to her pint-sized patient, Domingo’s face knits into a look of concern at the mention of Halloween candy. She pats his arm and tells him to go easy on the sweets.

But as much as the six-year old Escovedo smiled at the thought of going trick-or-treating, he was ready with even bigger, toothier smiles for his new dentist, who had come all the way from USC’s School of Dentistry to fix his teeth for free.

A traveling band of dentistry students and their instructors played “tooth fairy” for more than a hundred MUSD students last week. But instead of exchanging a nickel for a tooth, they offered up their services for free to the children, many of whom had never gone to a dentist before — even though plenty of dentist offices line the streets of their neighborhood.

The dental care, which included X-rays, cleanings, fluoride treatments, extractions, fillings, and restorations, averaged between $1000-1200 a child.

Many of the children that the team treated were in urgent need of major work. Dentistry students and faculty and MUSD nurses stayed late into the night at the trailers camped out on the Bell Gardens Elementary school playground.

“This was pretty intense,” Domingo says of this year’s visit. They didn’t leave until 11pm last Thursday, and still came back the next day for a morning session to treat additional patients.

The number of students who had serious dental problems were higher than in previous years, according to MUSD’s Student Health Assistant Bernadette Sanchez who says 80-90% of the students selected for the program this year were put into the most urgent of four categories.

Nurses from the district screened for 100 children who had no dental insurance and were the most in need for care. The children came primarily from Bell Gardens Elementary and Bandini Elementary in Commerce, though all students in the district are eligible for the program.

The services were also available to siblings of students selected for the program, because dental problems tend to travel within the family, Domingo says. The mother’s dental health is usually a good indicator of her children’s.

“If she doesn’t have dental care, for sure all of her progeny will have dental decay,” Domingo says.

Many of the students treated this year required a pulp treatment, which is needed if the child has major tooth decay, says Bell Gardens Elementary’s Nurse Rosemary Rodriguez.

Dental problems that go untreated have the potential to threaten the child’s overall health. Some parents may not realize the urgency of dental problems. Avoiding treatment could lead to expensive trips to the emergency room, Rodriguez says.

Prior to participating in the mobile clinic, one of the students had already visited the emergency room due to a tooth infection, according to George Muliere, MUSD’s coordinator of pupil and community services.

USC dispatches its dentistry students who are usually about seven months from graduation, and faculty to 14 different underserved neighborhoods a year. The school also runs programs serving migrant workers and the homeless. MUSD has partnered with the school’s Mobile Clinic program for the past nine years, rotating among four different host schools in the district.

Most students only see the trailers come around to their school four times a year, which is not enough, says Domingo, who acknowledges the program is only a safety net. Most dental care is available through private practices, while community health clinics that provide dental care are overtaxed, she says.

“We could be here everyday for years and never run out of patients,” Domingo says.
Especially in these uncertain economic times, parents with busy schedules and strapped

budgets depend on the clinic to help their children get the dental care they need, says Domingo. Many of the students, like Escovedo of Bell Gardens Elementary, have needed this care for a long time.

Domingo is the director of the clinic, formed more than 40 years ago by her mentor Dr. Charles Goldstein, who continued working into his 80s and is known as “dentistry’s Mother Theresa.” He passed away earlier this year.

Domingo’s own experience is similar to that of children like Escovedo. As an eight-year old in Oxnard, Calif, she was a patient of the Mobile Dental clinic. The encounter was so positive that it led to a career in dentistry with the USC program, which is geared toward promoting a sense of public service among new entrants into the field.

Domingo and the USC dental students continue to carry on the program’s tradition. “That’s what works for us,” Domingo says, “so we make it work back.”

Alejandra Almaraz, a 10th-grader at Bell Gardens High School, says she wants to study sociology in college so that she can get into social work. She was a bit nervous before her appointment, but the feeling quickly faded when she started interacting with the dentists, she said.

“The doctors were cool. They were very patient,” she said.

 Print This Post

Comments

We Are the Largest Chain of Hispanic Owned Bilingual Newspapers in the U.S.

Eastside Sun / Northeast Sun / Mexican American Sun / Bell Gardens Sun / City Terrace Comet / Commerce Comet / Montebello Comet / Monterey Park Comet / ELA Brookyln Belvedere Comet / Wyvernwood Chronicle / Vernon Sun

 

Copyright © 2009 Eastern Group Publications, Inc. 5/09 · Log in