Over there
As Americans continue to fret about the cataclysmic possibilities of President Obama’s ‘socialised’ medicine, a company which owns ‘Small Smiles’ paediatric dental chain has just paid out $24m in a legal settlement for allegedly performing medically unnecessary or substandard treatment on children.
The dental clinics had been providing Medicaid, federal government assisted care, to children of low-income families but the allegations were that unnecessary extractions, radiographs and pulpotomies were being carried out ‘for profit’ to compensate for the scheme’s low reimbursement rates.
Described as a matter of ‘profit over compassion’ the settlement was paid by the parent company to the US Department of Justice. Given that we often regard US trends crossing the Atlantic in due course, let’s ensure that this isn’t one of them.
Plasma screens
Am I the only person on the planet who takes a sharp intake of breath and raises my eyebrows each time a headline or a television programme declares that the age of the dental drill is dead?
The latest piece of technological wizardry is the ‘plasma jet’ given publicity recently when a study from Germany reported in the Journal of Medical Microbiology found that the technique destroyed bacteria in carious cavities. Journalists patiently explained that matter can be solid, liquid, gas or the most common in the universe, plasma. Not that its overabundance causes it to be cheap, at least not in this application where the necessary machinery currently costs tens of thousands of pounds.
It is estimated that effective treatment for dental caries using the ‘cool’ plasma will be available in three to five years.
QI
The BBC television programme QI (Quite Interesting) hosted by Stephen Fry, had a recent item in which it was ‘revealed’ that carbonated drinks cause less decay than potato crisps. Technically this is probably correct since the acidic nature of the drinks causes erosion (although surely the sugar content is responsible for caries too) while the carbohydrate in crisps, lodged in fissures, can arguably create the right environment for caries.
The problem with such apparently stunning nuggets of information is that without the full explanation of the facts behind them people run off with their own interpretations which then get progressively distorted to messages such as that it is fine to eat crisps as long as you wash them down with a fizzy drink afterwards. The programme sounds a loud claxon when a guest mouths an apparently well known fact which is actually incorrect. Take a dental health claxon QI (Quite Irritating).
The winner of the January prize of Beverly Hills Formula products is Munsoor Alvi of Glasgow for the caption: ‘Typical! You wait ages for an NHS dentist and then two come along at once...’