Local cancer patients get higher level of care

Kate Robins, The High Point Enterprise, N.C.
·3 min read

May 24—HIGH POINT — A new partnership between High Point University's new dental school and Atrium Health Wake Forest Baptist High Point Medical Center is providing an extra measure of care for cancer patients that officials said is not commonplace.

During chemotherapy or radiation treatment, some patients develop problems with their teeth and gums, said Dr. James Hoekstra, president of High Point Medical Center. Doctors used to refer patients to a small clinic in Winston-Salem, but it was often busy, leaving the patients' own dentists as their only other option.

But this new partnership places faculty members from HPU's Workman School of Dental Medicine at Hayworth Cancer Center.

"The dentists don't have the same expertise as the oral medicine specialists," Hoekstra said. "They know much more about what is needed for patients with chemotherapy or radiation, so it steps up that game significantly."

The addition of the clinic makes this only the fourth cancer program in North Carolina that has oral medicine experts integrated into the hospital system, said Dr. Scott De Rossi, the dean of the Workman School of Dental Medicine.

"It's really a service that you see at top-tier medical centers nationally, places like University of Pennsylvania, places like Harvard, places like University of California, San Francisco — very few hospitals," De Rossi said. "Most of the hospitals that have it are large teaching medical centers."

Discussions about the partnership began in fall 2022, when De Rossi reached out to High Point Medical Center to see how the dental school could offer its services.

"As a dental school with a number of different areas of specialty and in a clinical network of practices, we have some that are very medically oriented," De Rossi said. "It seemed obvious that we should just reach out and say, 'Hey, listen, is there any way we could provide value?' "

Now faculty members such as Dr. Muhammad Ali Shazib, the assistant dean and chief clinical officer, have already started to treat patients.

"We know that when there is a healthy mouth, there are better outcomes for our patients during their journey of cancer treatment and beyond," Shazib said in a press release from the hospital. "It is difficult enough battling cancer and going through treatments, so this relationship between High Point University and High Point Medical Center is bringing our expertise together to provide the best care to those in our community."

The program will also serve as a way to continue educating students in the Workman School of Medicine. De Rossi said this clinic will serve as one of many clinical rotations students will have to complete.

Hoekstra said he hopes to see further collaboration between the hospital and the dental school.

"We can expand in terms of our affiliations with the dental school — we're talking about either educational affiliations or clinical affiliations around the teaching and the care provided by dental students in High Point Medical Center," Hoekstra said. "This would be one more student-education relationship that we'd be able to have with them."