October 14, 2019 | News

ST HELIER, Jersey: Patients on the island of Jersey are having to wait up to five years for orthodontic treatment, according to local newspaper the Jersey Evening Post. The patients are primarily children, and a government spokesperson has described the waiting times as “unacceptably high”.

October 10, 2019 | News

STIRLING, Scotland: Freedom of information requests by the Scottish Liberal Democrats have highlighted the extremely long waiting times for oral surgery that some patients have had to endure. The British Dental Association (BDA) has responded by calling on the Scottish government to “stop treating dentistry as an optional extra”.

October 8, 2019 | News

LONDON, UK: The Alliance for a Cavity-Free Future (ACFF) is a not-for-profit organisation formed by a group of dental professionals. According to the ACFF, between 60% and 90% of schoolchildren and nearly 100% of adults worldwide have dental caries, and it is the single biggest contributing factor in hospital admissions of British children.

October 4, 2019 | Advertorial | Business | Interviews | News

Dr Lenka Banasova runs her own dental centre, Pearl Dental, in the Slovakian capital of Bratislava, where she has a passionate staff of dentists, dental assistants and dental hygienists. In recent years, her focus has increasingly shifted from conservative dentistry and prosthodontics towards periodontics. Most importantly, however, she is one of the few dentists to touch on the largely neglected topic of oxidative stress. In this interview, she explains how natural antioxidants can improve periodontal therapy.

October 4, 2019 | News

EDINBURGH, UK: The Great Irish Famine is something etched into European history. The impact of the famine has been well documented, and in a new study that adds to this cache of information, researchers have analysed the dental calculus and plaque build-up on the teeth of the famine’s victims, finding evidence of maize, oats, potato, wheat and milk foodstuffs. They believe that this information is important because it confirms historical accounts.

October 4, 2019 | News

LONDON, UK: The negative impact that excess sugar consumption has on both oral and overall health is a well-established fact at this point. It comes as concerning news, then, that an ambitious plan by Public Health England (PHE) to reduce the country’s sugar intake by 20% by 2020 has delivered mixed results so far, according to a recent report on the campaign’s progress.

October 2, 2019 | News

LONDON, UK: Though teething is a difficult experience for both parents and their babies, a judicious decision-making process should be employed when selecting a product to relieve it. This, at least, is the conclusion reached in a recent study regarding teething products in the UK.

October 1, 2019 | News

BIRMINGHAM, UK: Align Technology has announced that, throughout October, it will be hosting the “Digital Excellence Series—Powered by iTero”, a new event series for dental professionals in the UK. The events will be hosted in Birmingham, Motherwell, Manchester and London.

September 30, 2019 | News

LONDON, UK: Dentists may sometimes encounter patients who are agitated during a dental appointment and who become violent or aggressive. The Dental Defence Union (DDU) has said that there has been an increase in reports of such patients over the years, which is why dental professionals are finding it necessary to seek the support of the union and advice on how to deal with them.

September 24, 2019 | News

DUBLIN, Ireland: The negative impact of sugar-laden drinks on oral health is something dentists have known about for many years. However, that these drinks may also be a factor that leads to death is something new. In a large European-wide study, researchers have found that those who had a high consumption rate of soft drinks had a higher all-cause mortality rate than those who drank less than one glass per month.

September 23, 2019 | News

DUBLIN, Ireland: Free sugars (FS) are sugars added to food during its production, as well as the sugars naturally present in honey, syrups and fruit juices. The term is used to distinguish between sugars that are naturally present in unrefined food such as fruit or brown rice and sugars that have been refined, typically by humans but sometimes by animals. In a recent study, researchers at the Dublin Dental University Hospital at Trinity College have found that a large majority of 3-year-olds in Ireland are consuming on average ten level teaspoons of FS a day.

September 23, 2019 | News

GLASGOW, UK: At the recent British Orthodontic Conference in Glasgow, the British Orthodontic Society (BOS) and the Oral Health Foundation (OHF) have taken the opportunity to announce their joint plans for a national campaign to warn patients about the risks of direct-to-consumer orthodontics—also known as DIY orthodontics.

September 20, 2019 | News

YORK, UK: The history of dairy consumption among European populations is a surprisingly contentious subject. Lactase persistence—the ability to digest the lactose in milk into adulthood—emerged approximately 5,000 years ago in southern Europe, and just 3,000 years ago in central Europe. A new study of human dental calculus at British Neolithic sites, however, has revealed that dairy may have been ingested with regularity as far back as 6,000 years ago.

September 19, 2019 | Events | News

GLASGOW, UK: Attendees of this year’s British Orthodontic Conference (BOC) are the lucky recipients of two presentations by the esteemed American orthodontist Dr Jay Bowman.

September 19, 2019 | Events | News

GLASGOW, UK: Dr David Waring, chair of the British Orthodontic Conference (BOC) organising committee, has welcomed attendees to the annual BOC, currently being held in Glasgow until 21 September. The BOC is the largest event for UK dental professionals with an interest in orthodontics, and this year’s meeting is taking place under the theme of “Looking Ahead”. The 2019 BOC also marks the 25th anniversary of the British Orthodontic Society (BOS).

September 18, 2019 | Advertorial

VEVEY, Switzerland: The Micro-Apical Placement (MAP) System, from Swiss endodontic company PD, provides a unique and efficient method for precisely placing endodontic filling materials with either orthograde or retrograde approaches. The company considers it to be the product of choice for perforation, root end filling, pulp capping and retrograde obturation therapies. The NiTi shape memory needles can, furthermore, be manually shaped to any required curvature and adjust easily to the shape of the root canal for effective placement of repairing materials.

September 17, 2019 | News

OSWESTRY, UK: The Confidence Monitor survey has recently examined the mental health status of dentists working in the NHS and the private sector. The findings indicated that a large proportion of the dentists believed that their current role has a negative effect on their psychological well-being and that they were uncertain about where to seek advice and support regarding their mental health issues.

September 17, 2019 | News

GLASGOW, UK: The British Orthodontic Society (BOS) has welcomed in vitro fertilisation (IVF) pioneer Prof. Robert Winston to open this year’s British Orthodontic Conference (BOC). Lord Winston's presentation will consider the question, "Can we achieve happiness?"

September 17, 2019 | News

GLASGOW, UK: The American orthodontist Prof. Greg Huang, Chair of the Department of Orthodontics at the University of Washington School of Dentistry, will deliver the prestigious Northcroft Memorial Lecture at this year’s British Orthodontic Conference (BOC). In his lecture, Huang will outline the findings from the National Dental Practice-Based Research Network (NDPBRN) adult anterior open bite study, a large prospective practice-based network study conducted in the US.

September 13, 2019 | Events | News

BIRMINGHAM, UK: The British Society for Advanced Dentistry (BSAD) has announced several well-known speakers for its upcoming annual conference, to be held in the Hotel du Vin in Birmingham on 27 and 28 September. Prof. Iain Chapple and Dr Tif Qureshi will be keynote speakers at the event, while Dr Louis Mackenzie will be providing a hands-on session for attendees.

September 12, 2019 | News

San Francisco, U.S.: The International College of Dentists (ICD), conceived in 1920 by two visionary leaders, is today the 12,000-strong foremost global honor society for dentists and supports hundreds of humanitarian and educational projects worldwide. Global leaders met for the launch of the ICD’s centennial celebrations during the FDI World Dental Congress held last week in San Francisco.

September 12, 2019 | News

LONDON, UK: Dental Protection, the world’s leading protection organisation for doctors, dentists and healthcare professionals, has recently welcomed proposed reforms that would allow dental professionals more time to provide information when facing a fitness to practise (FtP) hearing relating to a clinical concern. The organisation is now calling for the extension to apply also to non-clinical cases.

September 10, 2019 | News

BELFAST, Northern Ireland: New data published by NHS Digital has revealed that real wages for UK-based dentists have fallen by at least 30% over the past decade, according to the British Dental Association (BDA). Adding to the dismay caused by this news was the revelation that a large gender pay discrepancy continues to exist. Self-employed male general dental practitioners earn an average of £38,000 more annually than their female counterparts.

September 9, 2019 | News

PLYMOUTH, UK: The systemic health benefits of regular exercise are myriad and well documented, and much the same could be said about the use of mouthwash. The latter, however, may negatively affect blood pressure reduction—a common advantage of exercise—according to a recent study by researchers from the University of Plymouth and the Centre for Genomic Regulation in Barcelona in Spain.

September 5, 2019 | News

BRISTOL, UK: The importance of mother’s milk to an infant’s development is now well established. In a recent study, researchers analysed the fossilised teeth of some of our earliest ancestors and discovered that the first humans breastfed their infants for significantly longer periods than did their contemporary relatives. This may have played a part in areas such as brain development and thus the evolution of the human species.

September 4, 2019 | Education | Interviews | News

A graduate of the specialisation programme in periodontics at the University of Zurich in Switzerland, Dr Alex Solderer mostly treats severe cases of periodontitis in his daily routine. In addition, he conducts research on periodontal and dental implant topics. In his latest research paper, Dr Solderer conducted a systematic review of the efficacy of chlorhexidine rinsing after periodontal or implant surgery.

September 3, 2019 | News

DUNDEE, UK: Though sometimes denigrated as a sign of vanity, self-portrait photographs—selfies, for short—are not without their advantages. One such advantage, according to a researcher at the University of Dundee, is that they often provide several new dental identifiers that could be used to help police in cases involving missing persons.

September 2, 2019 | News

LONDON, UK: Cigarette smoking rates in England have been in a steady decline since the 1970s, according to the Office for National Statistics. Whereas 45.6% of adults smoked in 1974, just 15.1% did in 2018. New research funded by the charity Cancer Research UK has shown that this effectively translates into 1.4 billion fewer cigarettes smoked each year, or 118 million fewer cigarettes per month.

August 30, 2019 | News

LONDON, UK: According to new statistics released by the NHS, there has been a 25% fall in dental treatments delivered to patients exempt from NHS charges over the past five years. In response, the British Dental Association (BDA) has voiced its concern that this trend is being exacerbated by the Department of Health and Social Care possibly backtracking on its pledge to break with its policy of automatically fining patients accused of incorrectly claiming free NHS dental care.

August 30, 2019 | News

LONDON, UK: Various studies have found that poor oral health may impair training and athletic performance. A recent study has examined oral health behaviours and risks in athletes and the potential for oral health intervention. The findings showed that the athletes had considerably high rates of oral disease regardless of healthy brushing habits. This disparity might be explained by their heavy consumption of sports drinks. However, the athletes showed great interest in changing their oral hygiene habits and were quite prepared to improve their oral health.