Resumo

JUNIOR, Emílio Carlos Sponchiado et al. Human tooth bank and health education at the Federal University of Amazonas: an experience report. Rev. ABENO [online]. 2012, vol.12, n.2, pp. 185-189. ISSN 1679-5954.

The Brazilian population is still at the mercy of illegal and unprepared professionals who perform unnecessary tooth extractions, seeking only to profit from clinical procedures and even to selling the dental organ. Patients often lose many teeth because healthy or partially affected teeth, which could have been treated and restored, are frequently extracted, ultimately affecting the patient's quality of life. One way of preventing this from occurring is by educating the population about the importance of good oral health and by helping people understand that the tooth is an organ of the stomatognathic system. It must also be pointed out that, before accepting a radical treatment entailing tooth extraction, patients have the right to choose other more conservative treatments that could maintain the function of the tooth in the oral cavity. Moreover, even when an extraction is required, neither dental professionals nor public agencies discard the extracted tooth correctly; oftentimes, it is discarded as common trash. Ideally, these extracted teeth could be placed in a tooth bank to minimize biological pollution and would be reused by universities for research or laboratory training. Universities that have dentistry courses could institutionalize their tooth banks, these could be involved in health education activities, and the extracted teeth could be correctly managed, thus reducing the problem.

Palavras-chave : Tooth Bank; Human Organ.