Trench mouth in 2007..

Sad case today - young girl in her early twenties. Came in complaining of bleeding gums and it transpires that she's suffering with Acute Necrotising Ulcerative Gingivitis... A long name for a very unpleasant condition which was particularly prevalent in the trenches in the first world war. ANUG eats away quite quickly at the bone loosening the teeth. Already some of her lower front teeth were getting loose. Nearly always in smokers, although we can treat it in all likelihood she will have permanent damage and an ugly shape to her gums around her teeth when the treatment is finished. Maybe she will stop smoking now but really I doubt it

Look out look out the GDC's about!

I was interested to read that the General Dental Council has started hiring private detectives to crack down on beauty salon's offering tooth whitening. Apparently there are 80 salons up for prosecution at the moment.. with several being sued by patients unhappy with their results. I have always thought that tooth whitening should only be done by registered dentists as sometimes patients need work on their gums before going ahead, and may need some existing dental work changed before having the whitening done. Also certain whitening products can harm the enamel... It looks as though people are waking up to the fact that really we need properly trained professionals dealing with aspects of a patients appearance.

The Germans are coming..

Its been a surreal two weeks. We've had a German dental student over and Sabrina has been in with each of the dentists to see how we work. In fact I've been really impressed with the quality of the questions she's asked and with her professional approach. Interestingly she's been told by dentists in Germany that she should move to the UK once qualified as the opportunities there are much better! It seems that about 10 years ago budgets for dentistry were capped (which is similar to the new NHS system just starting in the UK) and Germany has become a net exporter of dentists ever since. Its been a bit of a baptism of fire for her though - she was staying at the Reef surf lodge and one of her room mates came in and threw up on the floor before going to bed. Still shows that not everything is rosy here in the UK..