Xerostomia

From Freepedia

Xerostomia
ICD-10 code:	K11.710
ICD-9 code:	527.7

Xerostomia is the medical term for a dry mouth due to a lack of saliva. It may be a sign of an underlying disease, such as Sjögren's syndrome, poorly controlled diabetes, or Eaton-Lambert syndrome, but this is not always so. Other causes of insufficient saliva include side effects of drugs, medications, or alcohol, trauma to the salivary glands or their ducts or nerves, dehydration, excessive mouth breathing, or previous radiation therapy.

Xerostomia can cause difficulty in speech and eating. It also leads to halitosis and a dramatic rise in the number of cavities, as the protective effect of saliva is no longer present, and can make the mucosa of the mouth more vulnerable to infection.

Treatment involves finding any correctable causes and fixing those if possible. In many cases it is not possible to correct the xerostomia itself, and treatment focuses on relieving the symptoms and preventing cavities. Patients with xerostomia should avoid the use of decongestants and antihistamines, and pay careful attention to oral hygiene. Sipping sugarless fluids frequently, chewing xylitol-containing gum, and using a carboxymethyl cellulose saliva substitute as a mouthwash may help.

Xerostomia is sometimes colloquially called pasties or cottonmouth, the latter especially when occurring as a side effect or during a hangover.

Because of its frequency as a side effect of medication, its presence on lists of symptoms has passed into the realm of parody. An example from the glossary for the webcomic A Miracle of Science, describing SRMD (Mad scientist disease):

Signs that your loved one has an SRMD infection are: manic laughter, a desire to build a secret lab, hoarding of radioactive materials, sleep deprivation, building armies of oozing zombies in the bathroom, and dry mouth.