TIMELY ROOT CANAL THERAPY POSSIBLY SAVES THE FIGHT FOR BERT BATAWANG
By Ed de la Vega, DDS
PhilBoxing.com
Sun, 21 Mar 2010
Bert “Ninja” Batawang, the wily light flyweight from Cebu who is scheduled to meet Ulisis Solis of Mexico for an “eliminator” fight on Saturday in Acapulco, Mexico, leading to a title fight with the present champion, Carlos Tamara, was brought to our offices today by his manager Sammy Gello-ani for routine dental check up and a new mouthguard.
So what’s the deal, one may ask?
With modesty aside, I must say that Gello-ani’s decision to bring Batawang to us possibly saved Batawang’s fight with Solis.
Routine dental checkup revealed that Batawang had an abscess on one of his bicuspids.
Batawang’s fight is next weekend. Thus, an extraction is out of the question because he will not have enough time to heal. Besides, that was not the proper way to handle the problem.
Thus, we did the next best thing. We performed an emergency root canal therapy. Luckily the procedure turned out okay and the prognosis for the tooth, if properly restored later with a “crown”, is good.
Best of all, it will not disrupt the scheduled fight on Saturday.
Had Gello-ani not decided to bring Batawang for dental check-up, there was a distinct possibility that the abscess could have gotten worst and Batawang would not be able to fight. In fact Batawang told us that in the last three days, the discomfort has gotten worse.
On many occasions we have addressed the dental health of our Filipino boxers. In fact, our crusade has gotten to a point where people begun criticizing our efforts as self-serving. Some even accuse us of doing it to advertise our dental practice and the mouthguards we make.
Of course that is far from the honest truth.
All we want to do is bring out the issue as often as we can, even at the risk of being disparaged by some poor souls that lurk the internet so that the powers that be in our country will wake up and realize that dental health is part and parcel of the total health need of our boxers. With that, hopefully they will do what it takes to assure that our boxers are totally healthy.
Boxers undergo routine medical check ups. What is so wrong in including a mandatory dental check up to assure that they have good oral health?
We salute Sammy Gello-ani for his total understanding of our crusade. Hopefully more managers will follow suit for the good of our boxers.
Click here to view a list of other articles written by Ed de la Vega, DDS.
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