I started this blog to pass along information that might be useful to you. Much of it will obviously be centered on dentistry, but sometimes I will include other things I find interesting.

As most of our patients know, our daughter, Mary Elizabeth and her husband Will are going to have their first child (and our first grandchild) in mid April. His name will be Louie Franklin Sprague. Needless to say, we are excited and following the process closely. A few weeks ago we were discussing saving the stem cells from the umbilical cord after Louie's birth by cord blood banking. If Louie were to develop certain illnesses, these cells could be used to cure or treat the disease. This was entirely new to me and I started investigating. I found a great deal of information on cord blood banking, and if you want more information, check out these links:

http://parentsguidecordblood.org/

http://kidshealth.org/parent/pregnancy_newborn/pregnancy/cord_blood.html

What does this have to do with dentistry? I also discovered that both adult and baby teeth contain undifferentiated stem cells that can be preserved if the tooth is removed. So if your 17 year old is about to have their wisdom teeth removed, you might consider banking them. Follow this link for more information on banking stem cells from extracted teeth.

http://www.stemsave.com/