Will It Be Helpful To Have A Companion With Me At Treatment Sessions?

March 16, 2009 -- Question: Why do I need dental care before my chemotherapy treatment?

Answer: Well there are a number of things that you can do that is to regain control of the treatment process. Many patients feel that with the diagnosis, with the treatments and different things that are indicated, they should go through, they have no control of their own life and the things they do. But there are many things you can do to help.

One, I would say, given the treatment with chemotherapy, with hormones and with the bisphosphonates for the bone strength, is to have very good dental care. Before you initiate chemotherapy or treatments for either bone metastases or maintain bone health, you should have a very thorough dental exam. Make sure that there are no cavities or soft tissue process or infections that could flare during the chemotherapy or could lead to major damages in the bone. Those are more difficult to treat. Once you have started the process of chemotherapy, and certainly you don't want to interrupt chemotherapy for such a thing. So it's ideal that you take care of that first.