Dental Is Medical
An evidence project

Your insurance covers every part of your body except one.

That is not biology. It is a paper trail with dates on it: 1840, 1926, 1965. This publication documents how the mouth was cut out of medicine, and the evidence now putting it back.

Start with the founding investigation: The Severance →

Evidence Briefs

6 published
Policy

"Inextricably linked": the Medicare phrase that quietly readmitted dentistry to medicine

The regulatory phrase by which Medicare has begun conceding, case category by case category, that the mouth is medical.

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Clearance

Why cardiac surgeons wait for the dentist: oral clearance before valve surgery

Why oral clearance precedes valve surgery, what an adequate clearance contains, and what the screening trials actually found.

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Clearance

The mouth on the oncology ward: dental clearance before chemotherapy, transplant, and head/neck radiation

Osteoradionecrosis, MRONJ, and why cancer centers treat the mouth before the tumor.

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Cardiovascular

Periodontal disease and cardiovascular disease: what the evidence actually shows

The association is real and replicated. The causation is not proven, and the AHA says so in its own words.

Read the brief →
Metabolic

Diabetes and periodontitis: the two-way street

Bidirectional for thirty years. The Cochrane effect size on HbA1c is real, and smaller than you have been told.

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Systems

Hospital pneumonia and the toothbrush: the cheapest intervention nobody bills for

The cheapest intervention on the ward, the honest state of its evidence, and what its neglect reveals about how the system prices the mouth.

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If you treat these patients, the standard is published.

The clinical scenarios where dental care is medically necessary before medical treatment are documented, cited, and free to read. No gate, no sales call. Dental practices and physician teams each get their own side of the same standard.

Also here

Founding investigation

The Severance: How the Mouth Was Cut Out of Medicine

1840 Baltimore, the 1926 Gies report that told medicine to take dentistry back, the 1965 statute that made the split federal law, and the body that never signed the paperwork.

Read the investigation →
Field guide

Dental Is Medical: a field guide for surgical practices

What the medically necessary lane actually is, why most practices never found it, and what doing it right requires.

Read the guide →
Registry

The Case Registry

De-identified case entries showing what complete, accurate medical billing of a dental case looks like against what was actually collected.

Open the registry →