Mystery White Lesion in the Mouth
A 40 year old female patient recently came in to my office complaining of a white spot on her gums, lower anterior (front teeth). She popped it, and it went away. When if came back a second time, she decided to come in for a visit.
X-rays were taken to see if this came from a tooth, but the Xray seemed completely normal. After checking all the tissues I could see nothing. I told her to come in if it happened again, or click a selfie of it and text it to me.
Well, a couple of weeks later the text arrived. The picture of slightly raised white areas, seemed pretty unremarkable. Upon further texting she told me that she was using charcoal toothpaste…hmmm! I have read where the charcoal products can have some side effects and told her to discontinue using that for a month. Lo and behold there were no more white spots to report and all is well.
A lesson learned is to get a good history from the patient and keep your ears open to what’s happening. After many years of practice, this is the first ‘sensitivity to charcoal’ item I have run into but would never have figured it out had I not kept my ears open.