Dental clinics provide top service, bring in numbers

BALAD, IRAQ

09.03.2008

Courtesy Story

3rd Expeditionary Sustainment Command

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JOINT BASE BALAD, Iraq – In the nine months since the 673rd Medical Company has assumed control of the base's two dental clinics, troops have increasingly found that many services they thought would only be available back at their home stations can be performed with only a call and walkthrough.

The primary care manager of the Main clinic, Sgt. Jai-san Williams, said that nine of 10 soldiers can't believe the type of services available.

"We ask patients do they want their teeth cleaned when they visit and they say, 'You guys do that in Iraq?'", Williams said.

Williams said the clinics averages between 180-200 patients per week. "When we first got here, we had low attendance. Word got out and people are now coming in by the hundreds. I assume that's a good thing because it means we're doing the job right."

"We provide world-class care," says Lt. Col. Craig Patterson, commander of LSA Anaconda's Main and Aviation [West Side] Clinics. "These soldiers should expect the same quality care here that they would get in the States."

Dental treatment is classified into four categories: Emergency, sustaining, maintaining, and comprehensive. With six clinics located throughout the northern districts of Iraq, the 673rd, deployed from Ft. Lewis, WA, handles toothaches, restoration, removing wisdom teeth. . . efforts that allow the base's oral surgeons to focus on trauma.

"A true emergency is life, limb or eyesight," Patterson said. "A dental emergency would be acute infection, swelling, trauma bleeding or severe acute pain." Patterson said the unit can treat patients with dental trauma but rarely does.

The main facility has 16 bays of operations. With ten currently being used, the 673rd has provided service to soldiers, airmen, Marines, DOD officials, contractors, along with foreign and local nationals. The high amount of traffic places more emphasis on making sure that instrument sterilization is enforced. Williams says monitoring of each site's autoclave, a strong, pressurized, steam-heated vessel, is a high priority.

The clinics also make and provide prosthodontics (artificial teeth or bridges) or as the staff describes them, "flippers", said Sgt. Rafael Camacho, a dental lab technician.

"One patient came in after receiving a IED attack," Camacho explained. "He was missing one of his front teeth and worried about looking good. We made sure he got a flipper made before he left for home."

Camacho said it felt great to know that he could send a soldier home with some self-esteem. Camacho said it also felt great to know that the family would see that and be comforted knowing their family member was taken care of.

Soldiers who don't take care of their mouth could be putting themselves and their fellow Soldiers in the line of fire, according to the U.S. Army Center for Health Promotion and Preventive Medicine Directorate of Health Promotion and Wellness (USACHPPM). In the past, soldiers with dental issues were removed from theater, robbing their unit of manpower.

Additionally, the time it took to move a soldier to a dental base was usually lengthy, so many soldiers were operating on the ground in a depleted state. 673rd's presence in theater has helped to all but eliminate that problem.

"We can see someone just on a walk-in basis and have them treated and set up for a series of services in just one visit," Williams explained.

Structurally, the buildings are surrounded by columns of T-walls and able to continue operations during power outages or indirect mortar attacks.

"If the alert alarms sound, we'll use the same precautions everyone else is taught," Patterson said. "A hardened structure like this, plus adding the T-walls, makes this a pretty secure area to be at."

With three hygienists on staff and a host of assistants with broad levels of experience, Sgt. Williams said that no one should be concerned with the type of service the clinics can provide.

"The number of patients depends on whose in pain and who's not," said Wiliams. "It could be 1,000 or two; we're just here to serve."

Note: USACHPPM referenced from Anaconda Times Oct. 17, 2007 article.