To help patients cope with post-surgery pain and loss of appetite, a Great Neck dentist said he has found a treatment that would make a Jewish mother proud.
Harvey Passes, a Manhasset resident whose dental practice Passes Dental Care is at 415 Northern Blvd. in Great Neck, said he has been instructing patients to eat Ben’s Chicken in a Pot Soup from Ben’s Kosher Deli in Greenvale’s Wheatley Plaza for more than 15 years.
“I have been advising my oral surgery patients to consume it in order for them to avoid dehydration and fever,” Passes said. “My patients still talk about their prescriptions even years after their procedures.”
The idea for the treatment came after Passes ordered the soup while out to dinner at Ben’s.
He said the dish, which contains half a fall-off-the-bone chicken with one matzah ball, kreplach, noodles, peas and carrots, was “tasty and plentiful enough to take home for another meal the next day.”
Later that week, Passes said, he performed a tooth extraction on one of his patients and instructed her to eat plenty of food and drink plenty of fluids to avoid dehydration caused by blood loss during surgery and frequent urination after surgery.
He said when he called his patient later in the evening to check on her condition, he discovered that she had passed out from dehydration and EMT’s were in her home.
“The problem with oral surgery is that people lose their appetite and just want to sleep,” Passes said.
It was then, he said, that he thought of the meal he had at Ben’s earlier that week.
Passes, who has a program to help his patients overcome dental office fears, discovered a solution to a different problem facing his patients.
“I thought that the entrée was so very tasty, filling and soft enough to be easily consumed by oral surgery patients that it might just hit the spot,” said Passes, who also has a program to help patients overcome their fears of dentists. “And I was right. Somehow, it activates taste buds and stimulates people’s desire to eat.”
Fifteen years after he first “prescribed” a patient to eat Ben’s soup, Passes said he still instructs patients to eat at the kosher deli, where he said they are met with care by their employees.
“I’ve been told that the deli counter people are very impressed when my patients present their prescriptions for Chicken in a Pot,” he said. “The Ben’s employees are all very accommodating and tell my patients to ‘please take a seat,’ that they will bring them the order and subsequently ask ‘can we do anything for you?’”
