• Doctors: Please download this form. Then contact your patient’s dentist and use the form to ask questions about your patient’s oral health.

A letter as simple as this will help you greatly when diagnosing and treating many systemic diseases. If you know there is periodontal disease, which often has no pain, and your patient has an elevated WBC and you can’t identify the source, consider the mouth.

If your patient is diabetic, has had a heart attack, has stents and possibly a heart valve, dental and oral information is valuable and can identify a likely source of bacteria – from periodontal disease or dental abscesses.

When you – as their physician – tell a patient they need a healthy mouth, it carries a different weight than when the dentist tells them. The U.S. Surgeon General said it in 2000 and again in 2020: You can’t have a healthy body with an unhealthy mouth.

Physicians: Fax, email, or U.S. mail this request to your patient’s dentist and any dental specialists including a periodontist, oral surgeon, endodontist, or orthodontist.