Providing dental care to medically-complex patients continues to be a major challenge facing dentists. Despite advances in management techniques and treatment delivery, patients’ preexisting conditions and experiences contribute to difficult dental cases which often require antibiotic prophylaxis or in the case of acute infections, appropriate treatment.  Your challenge of matching the right drug to the right bug at the right time and at the right dose for the right patient and the right procedure will be described to a depth that makes this program clinically useful. Remember the Spiderman Principle that, “with great power there must also come – great responsibility.”  So what do you really need to know about all of those new antibiotics you keep hearing about? Are they really the latest and greatest?  Are there really new guidelines when it comes to antibiotic prophylaxis?

This foundational program reviews the basics of antibiotic pharmacology with a particular focus on the dental realm.  The goal of making dental pharmacology interesting and useful at chairside beginning on Monday morning will be emphasized.  The academic principles of infectious diseases management are simplified so that the most salient points are distilled into useful tenants that will help you be a better clinician and a better prescriber. After all, our goal is to make sure all dental appointments are not just successful for your patient, but also for you and your staff.

Objectives to be covered:

• Discuss the principles of antibiotic pharmacokinetics and pharmacodynamics.
• Understand the clinical significance of matching the right drug to the right bug.
• Learn how to be a better prescriber and how to write better antibiotic prescriptions in order to match the right drug at the right dose to the right patient and the right procedure.
• Recognize the importance of the different antibiotic classes and their different mechanisms of action.
• Appreciate the recent updates in antibiotic prophylaxis for cardiac, orthopedic and immunocompromised patients.

The speaker declares that neither he nor any member of his family has a financial arrangement or affiliation with any corporate offering financial support of grant monies for this CE program. Although commercially available products may be discussed, no financial arrangements exist between those companies and the speaker.