Transplant: dental cleaning

My transplant was 18 years ago (pancreas). The first few years I had a prophylactic premed before dental appointments. Then I was told by one of the providers on my team that it was no longer necessary.

You need to ask your doctor, I can’t have a dental cleaning until after 6 months
Hope this helps
Kandi

@hello1234, you might also be interested in this related discussion in the Transplants support group
- Antibiotics for dental work https://connect.mayoclinic.org/discussion/antibiotics-for-dental-work/

For everyone:
Did you know that Search is even better on Connect now?
You can search the entire community or limit your search to within a specific support group like Transplants. Here's how.
1. Go to the Transplants support group here https://connect.mayoclinic.org/group/transplants/
2. Type in your search keyword or phrase.

You can sort results by Discussions or Comments. If a discussion already exists on a topic you'd like to talk about, add your comment and join the conversation.

Interestedly, My Dentist prefers to stay cautious, so He has me take them for each cleaning. If your concern is based on c-dif or something similar, He has me take Amoxicillian 2000 MG and my c-dif never has come back and its been like 4 years since I had c-dif. So that's my current situation. I would say that whatever you team suggest or you Dentist i would go with their advice.

Hi @danab @kandidubrall @colleenyoung @cehunt57
Thank you so much for letting me know your experience.
I always liked to premedicate before a dental cleaning to be "extra careful" to avoid infection. But since I had this bad experience with Doxycycline, I am wary of taking an antibiotic. Transplant said it's not necessary unless the dentist feels it's needed.
I was never scared of antibiotics before, but now it feels like I am always scared of making the wrong decision.
If I take the amoxicillin for protection, but cause another problem, that's not good either.
Do you sometimes stress over decisions like these that are not clear cut on what's best?

If the doctor say you don’t need to take antibiotics before cleaning don’t , taking antibiotics to much can give you other problems

Yes
Kandi

Hi Hello, Actually, yes particularly when we get different opinions from different sources. So as with anything ask questions and second opinions are warranted in some cases. Ill be honest that particularly with the amount of information available. Like in this case we have our specialist in what ever medical problem we have and the Dentist. Ill use me as an example. I had c-diff and found out that it can be caused by antibiotics. At the time I had it i was in the Hospiital with an infection somewhere in my body. They had me on IV type antibiotics to try and kill the virus and because it was unknown had to use a broad spectrum. It took 5 weeks to find this virus as an inpatient at Mayo. Come to find out it was in my lungs and did not get into the blood stream so blood tests could not find it. They had to do a scope test to find it in my lungs. So anyway this is what reduced the good bacteria in my gut and caused the c-diff.
Now later on I had to have anti-biotics again for an infection and my PCP told me to counteract the loss of good bacteria in my Gut told me to take a probiotic. which must have worked as i was on the antibiotic for a few weeks but no c-diff. So when I was facing this question with my dentist he put me on a anti-biotic that was one that did better at not killing the good bacteria in my gut. and also it was only taken just prior to the dental cleaning. So would not be in my system long. So that's why they use Amoxicillin rather than one like doxycycline which as I understand does kill the gut bacteria. You may want to ask your doctor if you have to take that anti-biotic, if taking a probiotic would be a good idea also. BTW something to consider for overall gut health including yogurt in your diet does help with maintaining the good bacteria in your system. Hope maybe that helps.

@danab
Thank you so much for all the details of your antibiotics and c diff experience! All the details are very helpful to me. You gave me some excellent ideas including asking about probiotics. It's good to know that your transplant team was okay with probiotics. I will ask about it at my next visit.
Was there a particular brand like Align that you took?
I also like your idea about adding yogurt to my diet.
Thank you again for sharing your experience with me. You are always so helpful to me Dana! I hope you are doing well. 😊

Yes, it was a specific one that I got online as it wasn't available at a local store. It was Lactobacillus Acidophilus, I got it from a supplier on Amazon. I will admit that my team was only ok with it only during my time of taking the antibiotic. They said in general they don't recommend probiotics. It was my PCP that recommended it and when I told my team I was on it original they did not say anything. Later on when I was talking with them about it, when I was not on a anti-biotic they were against using it as a supplement.