Source: www.dentistryiq.com Author: John Kringel Helping patients with xerostomia can be especially challenging. Set aside for a moment the dental complications that result, such as rampant caries and mucositis. Severe symptoms like difficulty swallowing, sleeping, and talking can ruin the sufferer’s daily quality of life at the most basic level. Yet the available interventions1 come down to lifestyle tips such as sucking on ice chips, chewing sugar-free gum, and using a humidifier at night. Dr. Jeffrey Cash, a dentist in Richmond, Virginia, has experienced the frustration of dealing with xerostomia from multiple perspectives. He was initially moved by his hospital-based residency working with head-and-neck cancer patients. “My conversations with patients who had tried the standard suggestions without finding relief generally went like this: ‘Can’t you do anything else for me? I'm miserable. I can't eat properly. I wake up four times a night because I can't breathe.’ My answer, which felt terrible, amounted to ‘welcome to the new normal.’ ” Within a year of graduation, Dr. Cash learned exactly what these patients had experienced when he underwent chemotherapy as a part of his own cancer treatment. “Shortly after starting chemo, I developed severe dryness which led to mucositis. It was so uncomfortable I didn’t want to swallow or eat anything that would scratch the tissue.” The combined experience as a dentist and a xerostomia sufferer started Dr. Cash on a decades-long mission to invent a new treatment option that would be immediate, continuous, and predictable. That aspiration became a reality [...]