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A 27-year-old elephant named Devidasan developed a painful 19-inch crack in his tusk over the past five years. CV Pradeep, a dentist in Kerala, India, did some research and decided to fill the crack with the same resin used to repair human teeth. The difference: repairing the tusk took 47 tubes of resin in a two-hour operation!
“It was literally an elephantine task, because we had to find specialist equipment and modify it,” Dr Pradeep said.
“The main difference between this and a similar operation carried out on humans is that we were not able to use X-ray screening, because none of our mobile X-ray units was large enough to suit the elephant’s needs.”
Dr Pradeep, a professor at the PSM dental college in the town of Trichur, said that if the crack remained untreated dirt would have gathered inside it and potentially caused a deadly infection.
The elephant was not tranquilized, and remained cooperative through the procedure. The repair seems to have eased his toothache. Link -via Arbroath
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A brother and sister had their wisdom teeth removed on the same day. Lucky for us, mom was armed with a camera for the ride home! -via Bits and Pieces
Dr. Peter Kertesz is a dentist in London, England. He has a regular clientele of patients he takes care of during the day. But he also moonlights: Dr. Kertesz recently worked on the huge teeth in the powerful jaws of two tigers at the Dartmoor Zoological Park near Plymouth. One of the tigers had to be treated for a broken tooth. Both were anaesthetized before their dental appointment.
Dr Kertesz is one of only a few specialist zoo dentists in the world, a sideline to his day job of treating humans at his surgery in London’s West End.
His animal career began more than 20 years ago when someone brought in their cat for treatment and he has carried out dental work on exotic species including whales, pandas and elephants.
Zoo curator Will Walker said: “We have had him twice before over the last couple of years to do all our bears and other tigers.”
Dr. Kertesz is paid well for his bravery and expertise, as the bill for the two tigers was £4,500. Link -via Arbroath
Unlike the flier posted yesterday, this one advertises a real service. A dentist in Minnesota Muskegon had fliers posted with detachable teeth! Each one has the office address a potential patient can keep. Link -via Laughing Squid
This dentist no doubt inspires confidence in his patients with his tower made from 28,000 teeth from previous patients:
This 8ft tower of teeth is foul, and the summit of 15 years work by Yu Qian, a Chinese dentist who is trying to raise awareness about dental hygiene by word of mouth. Or, as it turns out, an awesome viral film gone global.
His piece of art is made from 28,000 human teeth (URGH). So far he has treated 100,000 patients, and ‘harvested’ 28,000 diseased teeth from his patients.
Link via The Presurfer
