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Much to a health care provider's chagrin, oral manifestations of HIV are not limited to thrush, KS and warts. Oral health care providers and researchers have documented more than 40 different oral manifestations of HIV disease. These lesions, although usually readily treatable, cause a great deal of discomfort in patients, affect their quality of life and impact their ability to adhere to complicated medical regimens. David Reznik, DDS, Jim Maddox, Web master and the HIVdent faculty have risen to the challenge to help dentists and health care providers recognize, treat and prevent these oral manifestations.
HIVdent, a comprehensive HIV care Web site that specializes in oral manifestations of HIV disease, was founded in 1997 by a group of dentists who had the desire to help others provide quality oral health services to adults, adolescents and children with HIV disease. Unlike many medical websites, HIVdent easily brings the worlds of oral health and medical care together. "We wanted to bring these two areas together so that dentists and other health care providers could readily see the connection between health and oral health. As dentists, we are continuing to emphasize the importance of recognizing oral health care as a vital component of all primary care programs," stated Dr. Reznik.
Although the pages are busy, surfers are able to easily follow the flow throughout the different sections. A search engine enables the surfer to search the HIVdent site to locate pictures, descriptions and news articles about a number of topics. It is arguably the best resource for oral manifestations of HIV disease images. Additionally, abstracts from selected dental conferences, policy and practice issues, patient education materials, and clinical management guidelines can also be found on the site.
Dentists or other health care providers can take advantage of the self-directed learning opportunities on the website. Currently, the site boasts 3 cases which take the provider through the entire spectrum of recognition, evaluation and treatment of an oral manifestation. Providers can also take advantage of a low-cost CME opportunity, Oral Manifestations of HIV Infection by Drs. Deborah Greenspan and John Greenspan.
Educators will easily be able to adopt this information into seminars, emails or cases for dental and other health care providers. Images can be copied quickly and placed into PowerPoint presentations, descriptions of oral manifestations could be printed into fact sheet booklets, and news items could be incorporated into clinical consultation opportunities. Although the images, copy and cases are copyrighted, obtaining authorization for use of these materials is easy. For the details, contact Dr. Reznik at faculty@hivdent.org.
In the next several months, the NRC and HIVdent will be bringing you cases, images and links regarding oral health and HIV. If you have provider or patient education materials to post, if you find an interesting link or if you are looking for something to make your presentation more interesting haven't found it yet, contact the National Resource Center at nrc@hektoen.org.
Take me to HIVdent: http://www.hivdent.org
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Take me to HIVdent