Antibiotics Before Dental Procedures? Maybe Not.

Does your child take antibiotics before dental work? It's been conventional wisdom to do so to prevent heart infections in individuals thought to be at risk. But according to a Reuters report, conventional wisdom may be changing.

Researchers have now found that giving antibiotics may not do anything useful at all, and even if it does, it's only a necessary precaution for a much smaller group of dental patients than previously thought.

Writing in the journal Circulation, they concluded that antibiotics were recommended "only for patients with underlying cardiac conditions associated with the highest risk of adverse outcome from infective endocarditis," and then only for certain procedures.

Precautions are good, and preventing infective endocarditis is good, but one less pill to try to get your child to swallow, and one less unpleasantry preceding a dentist's visit? Those are good, too.