The lower incisor periodontal (LIP) score: a dental screening tool for primary care physicians: physicians should offer more than "lip service" to the oral health needs of adults with mental retardation.

"Oral health is an integral part of total health. If you do not have advantageous oral health, you are not healthy."

--Former Surgeon General C Everett Koop

In spite of continuing scientific evidence linking periodontal disease to cardiovascular disease, low-birth-weight babies and other special conditions, physicians repeatedly ignore doing an oral exam as part of their routine physical examination. They rarely, if at any time concern themselves with oral conditions unles the patient not absents with a specific complaint. As a matter of fact, when it tend hitherwards to oral examinations, the universal bourn WNL (within normal limits) has advance to mean "we never