E-Cigars Or Electronic Cigarettes (A New Fashion Leading To A Dangerous Future)

Electronic cigars and oral health

Smoking is one of the most important risk factors for oral cancer, periodontal diseases as well as implant failures. It has been claimed by the E-cigarette companies that e-cigars can improve oral health by providing alternatives to smoking, but this role is still unclear. The effect of e-cigarette on oral health is not completely understood and a debate is still going on among many scientists and clinicians. It has been studied that plaque index, periodontal probing, and clinical attachment loss were significantly higher in smokers compared to other groups and there was no difference in self-perceived gingival pain and swelling between e- cigarette users and no smokers.

It is argued that e-cigarette use is not as hazardous to periodontal health compared to cigarette smoking. 5 However, bleeding in probing (a classical marker for periodontal disease severity) was masked in both smokers and e-cigarette users compared to no smokers – this is likely due to the vasoconstriction effect of nicotine on gingival blood vessels.5 Since periodontal and gingival cells are firstly targeted by e-cigarette aerosols, there is a concern that e-cigarette may have an adverse effect on periodontal as well as on gingival oral health.

Explosion of e-cigarette inside the smoker’s mouth results in abdominal burns, oral lacerations, teeth fractures, etc. Explosion can occur due to various factors like e-cigarette device design, battery quality, and compatibility between the device and the charger.

While taking medical and dental history, dental surgeons should identify all forms of tobacco and nicotine use (cigars, cigarettes, e-cigarettes, chewing tobacco, and other forms). Dentists should advise patients about the unknown and deadly danger of e-cigarette use.

Role of dentists in E-cigarette cessation counselling

Due to the oral health implications of tobacco use, dental practices provide a uniquely effective setting for tobacco use recognition, prevention, and cessation. Dental professionals can help smokers quit by continuously identifying patients who smoke, advising them to quit, and offering them details and facts about the process of cessation treatment. The dental team can play a major role in the making of tobacco-free societies and individuals through participation in community and in counselling their patients to quit smoking. Therefore, dental visits serve an opportunity to identify and support patients quit smoking.

Lack of training and inadequate knowledge of tobacco cessation counselling (TCC) are known barriers to counselling practices among dental practitioners. Thus, dentists have an opportunity to play a role in promoting healthy lifestyles by incorporating tobacco cessation programs into their practice, only if the dental students are trained well.

Conclusion

Tobacco use is one of the most important cause of several diseases, disabilities and death. Hence, every measure should be taken to eliminate its consumption completely.

First try to avoid smoking, then try to eliminate it from your life and after you have completed your trial process, then finally just give a big “STOP” to it. You can become an example for the young teenagers, let’s see how:

1. Don’t allow anyone to use E-cigarettes or other tobacco products around young people.
2. Make sure school is tobacco-free.
3. Set an example for others.
4. Try visiting tobacco-free locations.

Dental teams are in perfect job to provide help for smokers who want to quit smoking and promote smoking cessation. Thus, tobacco cessation counselling (TCC) is a must for every dental practitioner. As smoking has such an adverse footprint on oral health, it’s a key priority to ensure that all the members of the dental team engage with tobacco users and help them out to quit smoking forever.

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