The last bite

It's a stick up

One of the frequently recurring problems is denture retention and many patients use fixatives of one type or another to give them confidence in social situations. However, it was somewhat surprising to find dentures and stick up given a whole new meaning as a result of a bank raid in Pennsylvania recently. Having been apprehended, one of the erstwhile robbers turned out to be female and claimed in her defence that she had committed the crime to be able to afford new dentures.

I am not aware that prosthodontics is any more expensive in that US state than in any other but either way we can only hope that the motivation doesn't catch on. I suppose a touch of shop-lifting or pick-pocketing could go towards funding a scale and polish or an X-ray or two but it would need a decent sized heist or a lucrative scam to support implants and a full mouth rehabilitation.

Implants out

The recent controversy over sub-standard breast implants and who should pay for their replacement in the event that this is required did briefly move to speculation about other bodily-placed devices but not, to my knowledge, dental implants.

It does throw up an interesting question though. What would happen in the event that inappropriately manufactured implants had to be replaced and who would pay? Since the majority in the UK are paid for under private contract one would assume that the clinician who placed them would be responsible. But, as with the breast implants, the situation may arise in which the surgeon has died, gone out of practice or is not traceable. Should the NHS pick up the cost of replacement here too?

Thankfully, there is no suggestion or even hint that any such circumstance is on the horizon on these shores but how certain can we be about devices provided abroad under dental tourism? Perhaps best to not even go there.

Toxic dietary debt

Two oral health subjects which frequently get aired in the wider press have bobbed up again: those of a technology that will spell the end of the dental drill and of a proposed tax on sugar.

The a new wonder device is described as 'gas-firing' giving out high-energy gas and liquid particles that carry a tiny electrical charge and which will apparently cut through the enamel to the middle of the tooth, instantly killing all bacteria they come into contact with. I suspect the jury will be out on this one for a while.

Reported in the much respected journal Nature, authors from the US have called for a tax on sugar in the belief that it is toxic and dangerous and so should be regulated in the same way as tobacco and alcohol. So, in due course we may be asked to counsel our patients not only on smoking and drinking habits but also on sugar consumption...hang on, this is where I came in!

JANUARY WINNER