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Not me, but my daughter. I have been a veterinary assistant my adult life up until having my daughter at 23, and have been giving vaccinations and drawing blood on canines and felines for half of that time. I’ve seen my fair share of reactions from both vaccinations and hematomas at blood draw sites where an overexcited dogs heart rate was sky high or when the “holding” assistant didn’t do their job to hold the site till it clotted well enough, as well as many cysts/ abscesses, and helped the dr treat them all. I have a good eye and was many of the drs right hand at relaying information I got from the owners and making educated suggestions of what the problem is upon assessing the patient before the dr enters the room. It just helps everyone fully understand the situation if I know what I’m talking about, basically- I know my shit. This is relevant later, stay with me. Right now my daughter is 9 months old, and my first born. So it would be correct to assume that I know jackshit about babies. But, I do have a medical background kinda.My daughter was getting all of her vaccinations as scheduled, and it was time for her six month vaccinations. To the people that don’t have any children, your child should have had at least two rounds of vaccinations by the time six month vaccinations come around, and I had never observed any reactions with her. safe to say I was much more relaxed about her getting these vaccinations. I don’t know what it was about my daughter this day, but she was not in a good mood. She was crying and screaming and did not want the nurse who was administering the vaccinations to touch her at all. Well the nurse takes this as a chance to just jab the vaccinations in my daughter’s leg without properly sanitizing with an alcohol swab. JAB one down, JAB two down: before I can even stop her.Immediately the next day both legs right at the vaccinations sites swoll up about the size of grapes. I called her pediatrician and expressed my concern for possible abscess forming due to the fact that the site was not properly sterilized before administering the vaccinations, mentioning the lumps at the sites- so they scheduled an appointment about a week out to bring my daughter into the office. When I asked if they had anything sooner they said their schedule for my doctor was full, but that small lumps at the site was a typical side effect so I was assured waiting to be seen was okay. She was assessed and I was told that it was just a muscle knot in both legs from the trauma of the needle and sent home. Well over the next two days both legs continued to swell up about the size of small plums underneath, and they were very hot to the touch, with the right leg forming a bright red circle in the middle as my daughter slept. I knew it was an abscess the second I woke up and saw it. My daughter was sweating bullets, so I took her temperature and it was 102.7. I panicked, in the car and to CHKD we went. A very pompous surgeon comes in to assess the “lump caused by diaper rubbing” as she kept calling it, which was really pissing me off because it was clearly right where the vaccinations were given as you could see tiny pinprick pokes Dead center of the swelling on both legs, but doctors never want to admit that a problem occurred because of medical negligence. She told me that even if it was from the vaccinations it was probably just hematomas in each leg and that I should go home and give my child Tylenol as a fever reducer. I was furious to say the least, and asked to speak to her supervising surgeon on shift. This idiot agreed with the previous surgeon and said “ Just to please this worrying new mother“ we can do an ultrasound on both lumps. So we stay there for what feels like two hours, (it was actually three, sigh) And we finally get the ultrasound. I could see the screen the entire time because the ultrasound technician figured I had never seen ultrasound images before, little did she know that was a large part of my job. I can clearly see on the screen that she is imaging two pockets that are clearly full of fluid. she tells me to return to the room I was in and wait for the doctor to come go over the results with me. The doctor finally comes in the room looking very matter-of-factly more pompous than before somehow, and tells me that just as he suspected, the spots on my daughters legs were hematomas. I informed him that I could see the imagery the entire time- and that saying a fluid filled pocket under the skin IS a hematoma versus an abscess without doing any sort of fine needle aspirate to find out what the fluid filling the pocket is, is trying to differentiate wine from grape juice in a dark room without tasting it… he was not amused, he told me that he had been doing this for years and sent me home with an oral antibiotic, “even though she doesn’t need it, just in case” he kept saying. As if I didn’t know anything.So I start giving my daughter clindamycin, which is an antibiotic, every eight hours. Obviously she hates the taste, and keeps vomiting. Two days go by and the lump on my daughters right leg clearly needs to be handled. It is hot to the touch my daughter is having cold sweats, and despite being on Tylenol and Motrin alternating every six hours she still felt hot. I decided to take her temperature before going to bed that night because she was breast-feeding and just felt even hotter than usual, and her temperature had consistently been around 102. When I took it her temperature was 105.9 and when I tell you I about shit my pants, I didn’t think I could ever get my baby back to the hospital fast enough.when we get there I go into the emergency room and tell them my daughter has an abscess on her right thigh and if it wasn’t dealt with today there would be hell to pay. A surgeon I hadn’t seen before came in to assess my daughter, I told him the bullshit that I had gone through with all of the so-called specialists that worked at that very same CHKD and that nobody seemed to want to admit that these spots were abscesses just because they were caused from vaccinations, he was pissed at others ignorance… and looked at the spot for 1 millisecond before saying that is an abscess and we need to take care of it right away before your daughter goes septic. I was absolutely shocked, terrified that my daughter was going to be admitted into surgery within the next 10 minutes, but relieved that somebody finally listened to what I had to say and agreed with me on a diagnosis I had given her myself the very next day after vaccinations, WEEKS after it had been brought to medical attention. Anyways, that amazing surgeon takes my daughter, the surgery is done in an hour, she stays overnight to make sure her temperature returns to normal, and the next day we went home with just a little incision on her right thigh and a stronger anabiotic to try and get her left thigh’s abscess to go away without having to surgically intervene. Needless to say if I hadn’t been so persistent on going back to hospital after hospital and talking to doctor after doctor my daughter very well could have died to negligence of CHKD staff members.. sigh. ALWAYS LISTEN TO MOMTUITION… and use common sense.-edited for clarity-

In addition to the excellent answer by Scott Frey, I’d like to add some info about dental indices.In dentistry, we have dental indices that are used to describe conditions that we usually screen for.I will try to list the most used indices with links for more information:Decayed, missing and filled teeth (DMFT) index and DMFShttp://www.whocollab.od.mah.se/expl/orhdmft.htmlSignificant caries index (Sic)http://www.whocollab.od.mah.se/expl/sic.htmlThe Plaque Control Recordhttp://www.whocollab.od.mah.se/expl/ohileary72.htmlI think this is probably what you’d be more interested in since it display results in the form of %. The higher the percentile the worse your condition is. However, this is not in comparison to a group of people.Here is some useful statistic about DMFT and SiC dental indices:Mean DMFT and SiC Index of 12-Year-Olds for Some Countries, by Ascending Order of DMFThttp://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK11725/?rendertype=table&id=A5381The full text with comprehensive list can be found here:http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK11725/pdf/ch38.pdfThere are also several oral hygiene indices:Oral Hygiene IndexSimplified Oral Hygiene Index | OHI-SInfo: http://www.whocollab.od.mah.se/expl/ohiintrod.htmlI read a very nice article with more comprehensive information about different dental indices, and it’s a bit more down to earth for non professionals:http://www.enotes.com/nursing-encyclopedia/dental-indicesThese indices are helpful if you are working in the public dental health field. They are used to assess the prevalence and incidence of a condition (caries usually) and help us determine what is a good way to treat this condition, but they are a not very convenient to use with patients.Try picturing this situation with me: a 10 year old child comes in to the dental office for a filing. The child has multiple cavities, and an average oral health.If the dentist starts saying: "Son, you DMFT score is X, hence you need this procedure, and we’re going to do that etc…“ The child will likely be uncomfortable, and will probably hesitate to come back because he basically did not understand a word.If the dentist said: “Son, your teeth look really bad, you have problems with X number of teeth, and if you keep on doing so, they could become so bad that I may have to remove them. I am sure you don’t want to lose your smile.” The child will have a good experience, and will likely cooperate with you.This scenario could be applied to all types of patients, from kids to the elderly.Of course we see educated patients every now and then, and certainly we see people who like statistics. But for the general population, simple instructions are more effective than using these indices.