The benefits of dental implants

Don’t just take our word for it!

The Good Health section of the Daily Mail uses a patient case study to consider advances in dental implants. Interviews with the patient and their dentist tackle the cost of the procedure, what’s involved and patients’ suitability for implants.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-1232162/Me-operation-I-used-superglue-teeth–theyre-fixed-titanium-screws.html

10 things about Dental Implants

1. Dental implants have been around since the mid 1960’s.
2. A dental implant fuses to your jawbone through a process called osseointegration.
3. Dental implants preserve bone mass and prevent bone loss
4. Most dental implants are made of titanium.
5. Dental implants have special surface textures to allow them to heal.
6. Dental implants are not painful.
7. Some dental implants require no healing time and others require 3 – 6 months.
8. Bone and gum can be rebuilt to have dental implants.
9. Dental implantology is a highly specialised field. Choose a dentist that does both the surgery and makes the teeth.
10. You wont set off airport metal detectors

This has appeared on a few blogs and I thought those of you who haven’t seen it or patients interested in implants may find it interesting.

 

Alex

You can teach an old dog new tricks

I don’t know if I’ve ever said before but I am delighted to tell all my readers that I will be joined in the practice from August of next year by a new dentist. Chris O’Connor has impressed me since we first met with his attitude to dentistry and his strive towards clinical excellence, as well as being a really friendly nice guy.

Chris has already spent several days in the practice shadowing me and has impressed several of our patients  (and me) already with his attitude and approachability. After each visit Chris has written to me, at length, letting me all the positive things he found with how we do things.

He has also suggested areas where his training and techniques differ to mine. I was delighted to attend a one-day course with Chris (his suggestion) on endodontics (root canal treatment) and have since changed my techniques slightly as I think this will enable me to get better results for my patients

I am really looking forward to working with Chris and am sure he will be a great success and a worthy addition to the team at PDC!

the joy of learning

As dentists we are committed to our continued professional development. What this means in black and white is we have to do 15 hours of verifiable learning per annum. What this means to me is so much more.

I love learning about clinical and non-clinical (or business) theories that will advance my practice. I have always strived to be the very best that I can be and want my practice to represent this also. I spent 2 days this week in the company of Paddi Lund, an Australian dentist who leads the way in customer service. I thoroughly enjoyed the time and look forward to putting many of the ideas into practice to improve the ‘Penistone Dental’ experience even more.

Two things that stood out for me and are totally unrelated (although I can see a link).

1. On arrival I started chatting to an older dentist and asked why he was attending ‘9 hours CPD, it’s like doing 2 days worth in 1 day!’ was the reply.

2. A quote from Paddi ‘our fees are above average but we are not an average dental practice and you wouldn’t want average dentistry would you?’

Where would you want to go?

Fashion at what cost??

BBC Online publishes a report on complications associated with oral piercings in light of an Archive of Neurology report of a 22-year-old who died of multiple brain abscesses after getting his tongue pierced. BDA Health and Science Adviser Damien Walmsley emphasises the risk of infection, chipped teeth and gum recession, posed by oral piercings, advising readers that “oral piercing is ill advised and should be avoided.”

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/8302444.stm

10 years younger!

with permission I’d like to share a case which we have nearly finished at PDC which I think shows the power of modern dentistry and the effect a great smile can have on the face.

pt smiling prior to dental work

after placement of upper and lower crowns to increase the patient’s lower face height and also show more tooth

Private Dentistry Awards

Penistone Dental Care yesterday learnt that we had been shortlisted for the ‘Most Improved Practice’ in the 2009 Private Dentistry Awards. These awards are perhaps the most prestigious awards in UK dentistry so we are understandably delighted to have got this far!!

If you are looking for a dentist that goes the extra mile why not give us a call?

new advice on toothbrushing

Revising rules of teeth cleaning

The Daily Mail column Health U-turn looks at reversals in health rules with today’s feature looking at the change in the rules around when to clean your teeth. The article notes that while previous advice was to brush your teeth following a meal, the advice now is to brush before a meal rather than after once food acids have softened your tooth enamel. BDA Scientific Adviser Damien Walmsley says it is good to wait at least an hour after eating as brushing teeth when the enamel is soft can “lead to it being scraped away.”

The value of seeking good treatment

Medical treatment abroad: is it a false economy?

The Telegraph takes a closer look at “global health tourism” and considers the “cost, speed and safety” factors in relation to the risks. This follows  warnings last week from the Health Protection Agency which claimed a “new antibiotic-resistant superbug” had found its way to the UK via patients who had been abroad for medical treatment. In the article, health professionals speak out on the importance of knowing the risks before taking a decision to receive treatment abroad and offer some anecdotal insight and guidance in terms of what patients should consider. Chair of the BDA General Dental Practice Committee, John Milne, notes remedial work having been carried out by BDA members, and reiterates the need for knowing the “potential risks and the hidden costs.”

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/6030188/Medical-Treatment-Abroad-Is-it-a-false-economy.html

I have posted this as it yet again raises the question of seeking medical, and obviously dental, treatment abroad. Although the headline price may be cheaper (although I’m sure the exchange rate may have affected this a little) you really need to look at the whole picture.

All the implant work we do at Penistone Dental Care is undertaken to the highest clinical standards using the recognised world-leading implant company’s implants. We guarantee all our work and are on hand 24 hours a day should you have any problems following such work. I have recently seen several patients who have had implants placed abroad and who are now faced with much higher bills to correct the work than if we had done the work in the first place.

As with any important decision, especially when it concerns you, always look into all aspects of what you will receive.

the great fluoride argument

I noticed this in the guardian and thought it worth bringing to everyone’s attention (again!)

A toothless argument 

The success of Britain’s anti-fluoride brigade is a dismal commentary on a rigid, embattled nation

Long ago, far down memory lane, I was writing editorials for the Daily Post in Liverpool, where Suralick, much like the now further ennobled Suralan, was proprietor “over the bridge”. Each morning, the Post’s editor would hurry over that bridge to see what Suralick wanted said – and, as often as not, he’d commission a fresh blast on the evils offluoridation, one of his abiding preoccupations. So I excoriated mass medication by bureaucratic fiat as instructed, and happily forgot about the whole damned convoluted subject when I left to go to Manchester. But half a lifetime later, nothing’s changed.

Suppose you’re in New York or Los Angeles reading this, and you feel like a glass of tap water. It will be fluoridated: 70% of America’s water supplies – including all the big city ones – are treated thus. Thirsty down under? Australia is nearly 70% fluoridated, too – just like Ireland, where the average number of decayed or filled teeth per child is 1.3, against 2.3 in non-fluoridated Northern Ireland. But the same glass of water in Britain has only a one in 10 chance of stopping such rot. Our wan efforts at fluoridation mostly ground to a halt before Harold Wilson entered Downing Street, with under six million covered. And only today, at long, aching last, are we trying to do better.

Welcome to Southampton where the primary health care trust and strategic health care authority are agreeing the final details with Southern Water. Fluoridation gets under way there next year. Maybe Bristol and Manchester will manage to follow on soon. Maybe the absolutely overwhelming weight of medical evidence in favour of fluoridation will tell in the end. But don’t celebrate yet because the whole non-history of treating water here in the UK is a saga of doomy tunes, manic melodies and democratic impotence.

Our children’s teeth have endured decades of decay because we left progress to pressure groups making noise. What didn’t happen next is a wider text for the times.

To begin with, in broad-brush terms, Whitehall generally endorsed fluoridation but didn’t specifically enjoin Britain’s water companies to follow suit. The companies, apprehensive about legal challenges, sat on the sidelines. In 2003, a new Water Act lifted courtroom shadows and made the whole implementation business reasonably automatic as long as profound local consultations took place. Southampton jumped through those hoops last year in a blizzard of learned paperwork.

Some 10,000 residents – out of 200,000 or more – took sides. The Daily Echo demanded a referendum. The tide of opinion ran 75% to 25% against fluoridating. But still the health authority went ahead. And quite right, too.

Forget, for a moment, the morass of conflicting expert opinion available here.– studies by York University, pronouncements by the World Health Organisation, countervailing scraps of research from hither and yon. It isn’t sensible to get bogged down amid the scientific tit and tat of 40 years past. The plain fact is that 350 million or more people around the globe drink fluoridated water, show no evident sign of debility as a result (bar a little occasional staining) and enjoy markedly less dental decay.

Nobody, for all the hysteria, thinks that Obama’s America is sliding down a devilish medical slope because it drinks fluoridated water. Nobody reckons that Birmingham is sick of some unidentified palsy that non-fluoridated Manchester escapes. Nobody can point to evident affliction in fluoridated Newcastle or Gateshead. Nobody can mount an effective argument against the entire weight of British and international evidence. It’s a done deal, a redundant debate, a long overdue moment to move on.

Yet we don’t. The 7,500 dissidents in Southampton – supported by theGreen party and Daily Mail – banged away just as ferociously as when Suralick ordered another editorial blast. Science didn’t wither their fury. Decades of irrefutable evidence were harangued out of existence. And it will be like that all over again when any caravan of commonsense leaves the Solent and moves on.

Community politics, the mantra of the moment? They only work if the dozily reasonable who know that fluoridation is a good thing for their kids get off their backsides and challenge the green ink brigade. They only function if the obvious holes in the counter-arguments are drilled and filled. It’s a dismal commentary on unchanging, embattled Britain. Perhaps Suralick would have moved on to Frankenstein Foods and GMnightmares by now, if he’d lived: but he still wouldn’t be drinking the water.