Filling a Cavity in Dental Care.

About a decade ago, Dian Baker, a professor at Sacramento State School of Nursing, responded to a directive from the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) asking health care practitioners to do something about the thorny and serious problem of ventilator hospital-acquired pneumonia, which afflicts thousands of people each year. After consulting with colleagues on the issue, Baker noticed something interesting. Although hospital ventilators had been widely assumed to be the cause of this problem, the truth was that most people getting pneumonia in hospitals weren't on ventilators. The true culprit may come as a surprise: Nurses were shirking the unpleasant task of brushing the teeth of seriously ill patients.