Dentist and alumna Lauren Lapinski uses routine check-ups as an opportunity to evaluate a patient's overall health.
When dentist Lauren Lapinski performs a checkup, she examines more than her patients’ teeth and gums. Taking a holistic approach, she asks a lot of questions and performs a head-and-neck exam in addition to the standard dental exam. Lapinski CC’01, RDSM’05 has detected symptoms of thyroid cancer, leukemia, sleep apnea, diabetes, tonsil and sinus disorders, and other health problems, and made the appropriate referrals.
During the exam, she checks the thyroid gland, lymph nodes, and carotid arteries. She also looks for temporomandibular joint disorders and skin cancers. “It’s part of every checkup I do, along with an oral cancer screening,” she says. A strong advocate for the importance of dentistry in overall health care, she says, “Many people don’t have yearly physicals, but they’ll see their dentist regularly, so we really are on the front lines of care.”
Lapinski, who practices in Hillsborough, New Jersey, returned to Rutgers School of Dental Medicine last fall to share her innovations in informal lectures. The students “were enthusiastic and receptive and asked if I could come back to the clinic to do hands-on training,” she says. “I’m glad to have this opportunity to pass along what I know.”
Her advice to students: practice the head-and-neck exam while you are still in school. “That’s why we say we ‘practice’ dentistry,” she says. “By doing this over and over, you learn to recognize when something is wrong.”
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