Dentistry 15

Dentistry15 at TwickenhamThe Dentistry team lets you know what went on at Dentistry 15.

On the 19 and 20 July, Dentistry and FMC welcomed delegates to Dentistry 15, a two-day event set at Twickenham Stadium, which featured six dental learning zones: Minimally Invasive Dentistry, Dentistry Live, The World Aesthetic Congress, CPD Dentistry UK, The ADI Academy and Young Dentist.

The event had a huge scope of lectures running throughout the day covering everything from live hands-on procedures through to aesthetic, MID and implant knowledge. If you missed Dentistry 15, here we reflect on some of the lectures that took place over the two days.

The lectures

History and introduction to dental implants and clinical options with dental implants: Peter Fairbairn introduced this session by reviewing the history and discovery of osseointegration. He said that there has been ‘rapid progress today’. He went on to compare the subsequent progression from there to now in dental implants.

Busy-Hands-on-lecturePhilip Friel then discussed the options available with dental implants, as well as explaining how to plan implants with a view to the proposed restorative outcome to guarantee success. He said ‘ossointegration makes use of implants predictable and possible’.

The hands-on part of the session saw each delegate with their own porcine mandible or maxilla to extract a tooth from. Philip told Dentistry: ‘To complement the numerous short lectures, practical hands-on sessions on pig heads were an important part of the day.

‘These sessions allow practical, tactile appreciation of some of the techniques discussed, including extraction, socket preservation, implant placement and impression taking’.

Strategies to stop financial decay: Sian Lloyd, director at Lewis Ballard, gave an informative Life in Practice talk on examining key financial indicators to make sure your practice runs as efficiently as possible from a business perspective. Using the analogy of a car dashboard, Sian presented the ‘dental business dashboard’, five key measures of efficiency: set your goals; measure success predictors; measure sales and marketing; measure costs and cash; and measure key financials.

Using details from a benchmarking study, Sian illustrated how the top 5% of efficiently-run practices generated around £252,000 per year more than the remaining 95%, by implementing these business efficiencies. In closing, Sian commented: ‘Think about what’s going on with your practice, and put some targets and structures in place to reduce the gap from where you are now, to where you’d like to be’.

Cutting-edge online marketing strategies that work: In the next Life in Practice session, Nigel Reece, managing director of dental marketing firm, Dental Design, explained the concept of mobile local searches. Nigel stated that 94% of Google searches on smartphones are ‘local’ based, meaning that the user is searching for nearby products and services.

Following new rules released by Google in April 2015 that all websites must be ‘mobile friendly’ if they are to surface on the search engine’s results pages, Nigel’s presentation highlighted the ever-increasing importance of a strong web presence, and how a mobile-responsive website is a vital tool in attracting new patients to your practice.

The ‘pay per click’ concept was also covered; delegates heard how increasing your website’s searchability through the use of keywords and performance tracking, can help keep your practice on Google’s all-important page one search view.

Surgical placement of dental implants: Abid Faqir, a member of the Association of Dental Implantology, led a hands-on demonstration in a programme specifically designed for undergraduate students, on how to fix an implant into a created osteotomy.

Beginning with an explanation of the importance of having creating a predictable osteotomy with minimal trauma, Abid ran over the correct placement of implants, specifically in terms of angulation. He then moved on to a live demonstration using a porcine mandible, stopping occasionally to answer delegates’ queries.

Abid stressed the importance of preparing osteotomies correctly, negating the need to over-torque. After the implant was successfully placed using a Nobelactive manual torque wrench, Abid added an implant cover, and sutured the site. The assembled delegates then took to their own porcine maxillas and mandibles, to practise osteotomy creation on an implant placement.

Ingrid-newIngrid Mankeviciene, practice manager
‘I’ve come to Dentistry 15 specifically for the communications lectures. I really like the exhibitions; there are a few things here I haven’t seen before!’

Three-dimensional endodontics: In a Dentistry Live presentation titled, ‘Understanding the internal aspects of root canal through new technology’, Dr Gilberto Debelian highlighted some advancements in technologies for the treatment of root canal, from micro-CT imaging in examining a root canal anatomy, to 3D-printed constructs that allow practice run-through treatments of real-life cases, and new bioceramic sealers.

Moving on to advances in endodontic instrumentation, Dr Debelian presented the XP-endo finisher file for root canal preparation. Based on the shape-memory principles of nickel titanium alloy, the flexibility of XP-endo allows cleaning of the entire root canal, while preserving dentine. Working in a similar manner to a blender, the XP-endo finisher scrapes the entire root canal wall, and at the end of use, the canal volume remains unchanged.

Periodontics: simple treatment can reap huge rewards for patients and clinicians: Amit Patel created a relaxed, interactive atmosphere for delegates in the last Dentistry Live lecture of Friday, as he discussed the basic principles of periodontics. Stating that periodontal disease costs the NHS approximately £7.5 billion a year, and the high litigation rate associated with undiagnosed cases, Amit stressed the importance of a ‘good foundation’ of dental care as a preventive measure for the disease.

Amit ran through essential tools and basic periodontal disease examinations, which prompted a debate with delegates over the definition of recession, pocket depth, and probe measurement. Essentially, Amit encouraged delegates to suggest healthy lifestyle choices to patients, and to address other potential underlying health issues, in order to dramatically reduce or cure periodontal disease.

Everyday resin realities: simple solutions to complex problems: Jason Smithson, clinical director of the post-graduate certificate in restorative dentistry at The Academy of Clinical Excellence, gave knowledge and tools to confidently approach more demanding cases, as well as advice on how to master the management of occlusion with direct resin and how to manage discoloured tooth substrates.

Each point was explained with a real life dental case. The presentation held interest and Jason gave the audience the opportunity to ask any questions at the end.

MI dentistry: making it work: Roger Matthews, chief dental officer at Denplan, started off his presentation with his objective that he set himself in the 1970s: ‘To preserve as much natural healthy oral tissue for life by helping achieve optimal oral health for all’. Roger explained how to apply MI dentistry from marketing to delivery and how it can maximise income, motivate individuals and maintain inspiration. He also went on to explain how to make MI work in your own practice.

The current face of dentistry for the progressive dentist:  ‘If eyes are the windows to the soul then the mouth is the voice of the soul and the face is the home of beauty’ was one of the opening sentences in Professor Bob Khanna’s presentation. Professor Khanna became one of the first dental surgeons in the world to venture into facial aesthetic procedures using botulinum toxin (BTX) and dermal fillers.

His presentation saw him teach delegates how to incorporate facial aesthetics into their existing dental practices, as well as the range of fillers available to dentists and tips for intra oral and extra oral assessment prior to treatment planning.

Champs Reception 4Design your patient’s smile: Dr Christian Coachman showed delegates how to design a patient’s smile step-by-step to produce the most accurate and desired smile possible.

Videoing patients talking about their likes and dislikes with their smile is a useful technique to see the natural smile in action that can often be difficult to capture when just taking photos.

Stills can also be used from this to see how the whole smile fits together. Dr Coachman explained the importance of how the face, mouth, teeth and lips synchronise together should be taken into consideration throughout the process when designing a smile.

Dr Coachman suggested the next step to design a smile is to create a simple 2D smile frame using Keynote or Powerpoint. This can help dentists to brainstorm a treatment plan that’s also useful to communicate the smile design to the laboratory/orthodontist so they can see what needs to be carried out, in order to achieve the desired full facial smile. It also gives some control back to dentists. The 3D mock-up from the laboratory is likely to be accurate too.

The 2D smile frame is easy to produce, time efficient and helps to explain the proposed treatment to patients so they can see a before and after mock-up on a full facial photo, encouraging higher acceptance rate of treatment plans.

Posting online: a reminder of the GDC’s social media guidance and ethical advertising: Amit Patel discussed important issues of social media that are increasingly affecting the profession.

He gave advice on how to remain professional in potentially difficult situations that might compromise professional conduct in light of the GDC.

Although such platforms can be used correctly and effectively for practice advertising, professional confidence and trust needs to be projected to patients at all times.

The distinction between social media (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and so on) and professional media (Linkedin, Dental Circle and so on) should remain separate.

Disrespecting fellow professionals is not appropriate and will not benefit patients and will cause a lack of patient confidence in the profession.

Any cases or photos of work uploaded online should always have the patient’s consent. All photos must be anonymous. Patient confidentiality should never be breached. Photos and samples of one’s work online can be stolen if not copyrighted, and used to promote other professionals.

The GDC has instructed every practice to have a social media policy for all employees to sign and act accordingly within this. The practice may have a Facebook page that can be used correctly for advertising and should link to the practice website.

All employees should keep social and professional medias/blogs separate and remember once content is online, it stays online, and is accessible for all patients and the GDC to see.

Champagne ReceptionMedical emergencies: Dr Yusef Omar discussed how to reduce the potential of patient collapse. He looked at successfully dealing with common, serious and rare medical emergencies that could occur in practice, such as heart attacks, allergic reactions and anaphylaxis, fainting, epilepsy, strokes, choking and sudden cardiac arrest.

With allergies on the rise it is important to keep up-to-date with alternatives of common products used that some patients may be sensitive or allergic to, such as chlorhexidine. Dr Omar named Emerade that he believes has ‘superseded’ the Epipen for anti-allergy use for adrenaline.

According to Dr Omar it is a five-second injection with longer needles, a longer shelf life of 30 months and comes in three different doses. It is a quick-acting remedy that apparently is also cheaper, costing £30.

He advised dentists to change their system for emergencies if their current system isn’t working. This includes producing a checklist for the whole dental team to carry out prior to patient appointments to ensure any preventable mistakes are avoided in advance.

This also included checking patient allergies and recent health history checks so the team is prepared as much as they can be.

Next year

The team behind Dentistry 15, Independent Seminars, is busy planning next year’s event to make it even bigger than 2015’s.

To make sure you don’t miss it and to keep up to date with all the latest information on the show contact the Independent Seminars team.


For more information please contact the FMC events team on 0845 1841498 or email [email protected].

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