Already have an account?
Get back to the
Health

A Woman Found Out She Had This Serious Heart Issue Because of a Routine Dentist Appointment

Tags:

When you go to the dentist, you probably assume you’ll get your teeth cleaned, fill a cavity or two, and be on your way. But after a woman’s own dentist flagged her routine blood pressure check at the beginning of her appointment as abnormal, she eventually discovered she had a much larger health problem on her hands: an aortic aneurysm.

Texas-based Patricia Greer was hesitant to do anything when her dentist’s staff took her blood pressure and the reading came out 180/100 — compared to the baseline of 120/80. “I was shocked at how high it was,” she explained told TODAY. “I mean it was awful, but I kind of at first wanted to just blow it off.” It wasn’t until her dentist refused to continue their appointment and gave her a referral for a cardiologist that she decided to take those concerns seriously.

Heeding that advice, she found out days later that she had an aortic aneurysm, a giant bulge in the aortic artery that carries blood away from the heart to the chest and eventually the rest of the body. If untreated, it can lead to a tear that can burst, resulting in further heart damage or even death. After monitoring her health for several years, Greer’s doctors recommended she have open-heart surgery, which she successfully underwent this year.

While Greer has recovered, she hopes her ordeal serves as a reminder to take warnings from all of your medical professionals seriously. “When I went in last time to get my teeth cleaned, I said, ‘You really have to understand that you saved my life. If it hadn’t been for you explaining that I need to go have it checked, I probably wouldn’t have done it,’” she said.

Plus, considering many people see their dentists two times a year and in some cases go years without seeing other specialists, it never hurts to consider what your dentist tells you!

Use left and right arrow keys to navigate between menu items. Use right arrow key to move into submenus. Use escape to exit the menu. Use up and down arrow keys to explore. Use left arrow key to move back to the parent list.