Brushing Up on Gum Disease
by Steven Shepherd, M.P.H. Getting your teeth pulled because of a sore arm may sound farfetched. But it happened more than once, says Saul Schluger, D.D.S., professor emeritus at the University of Washington's school of dentistry in Seattle. Schluger has been involved in the treatment and study of gum, or periodontal, disease for more than 50 years, and he recalls that the patients in these cases were professional baseball players who had the ill luck to have developed their dental (and arm) problems when the "focal infection" theory of periodontal disease was in vogue earlier this century. The theory held that periodontal disease always worsened, could only be stopped by pulling teeth, and that it could spread--not only from one area of the gums to another, but to other parts of the body. In the case of an affected ballplayer with a sore arm, explains Schluger, it was considered possible that migrating infection from the gums might be the cause of the...