Saturday 13 July 2013

Part 4. Immune System Gone Wild. Dr Carl Laskin and Dr Izchak Barzilay

Dr Carl Laskin was kind enough to fill in for a speaker who had to cancel because of family emergency.  He is a reproductive endocrinologist, a wombatologist as he so colourfully described himself, and the head of the Lifequest Centre for Reproductive Medicine. He told us that autoimmune disease is not often a big problem in pregnancy.

The goal is to identify the effect of the underlying disease on pregnancy and pre-plan the pregnancy based on medications and the current disease activity as well as social situation (how you would be able to manage).  Autoimmune is the gift that keeps on taking as we know.

He felt that  you could conceive and carry a child while taking anti-TNF drugs but definitely not on methotrexate. We learned that ObGyns are on the alert for Ro and La. Sick Children's Hospital has a program where an ultrasound of the electrical systems of a baby's heart can be done at between 20 and 32 weeks. Pregnancy is seen less often with Sjogren's Syndrome because the majority of patients are post menopausal.

Next we heard from Dr Izchak Barzilay who is the Head of the Division of Prosthodontics and Restorative Dentistry at the University of Toronto.  He told us that with Sjogren's Syndrome we could face problems with dental adhesives and dentures in general because you need saliva to be comfortable with dentures. With denture adhesive you often lose tissue when you remove the denture.

An example only

He gave us background on shapes and sizes of implants and told us that there is a 95% success rate in 10 years.  This was seconded by Dr Papas who has a 97% success rate in 200 patients. The implant must be "kind" to soft tissue. Titanium is reliable, and you can count on it to work. The key to successful implants is healthy bone to support them and even grafted bone can be used.
                                   implants    dentistry.utoronto.ca

Other Sjogren's posts:
Part 3 of Sjogren's Conference. Dr Carl Laskin and Dr Itzchak Barzilay 

Part 2 Immune System Gone Wild. Sjogren's National Conference Dr.Papas



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