Dental Tribune United Kingdom Edition

A round 1,500 cancer pa- tients a year will benefit f rom a cutting edge can- cer treatment – Proton Beam Therapy – that will be avail- able in London and Manches- ter, Health Secretary Andrew Lansley announced today. Up to £250 million will be invested by the NHS in build- ing Proton Beam Therapy fa- cilities at The Christie NHS Foundation Trust hospital in Manchester and University College London Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust. The Depart- ment of Health have set aside public capital for this scheme. Proton Beam Therapy is a type of radiotherapy, which uses a precision high-energy beam of particles to destroy cancer cells. The treatment is particularly suitable for complex childhood cancers, increasing success rates and reducing side-effects, such as deafness, loss of IQ and sec- ondary cancers. Given the complex nature of the treatment and facilities, Proton Beam Therapy won’t be fully available in England until 2017. Until then, the NHS will continue to fund patients in need of Proton Beam Therapy to go abroad – either to Swit- zerland or the USA. By 2014/15 the NHS will be spending £30 million per year sending up to 400 patients overseas. Health Secretary, Andrew Lansley, said: “Developing a national proton beam thera- py service is vital to ensuring our cancer facilities are world class. We have always said that it is patient outcomes which matter, and to get the best for patients we must always be looking to push the bounda- ries. “In addition to improved success rates proton beam therapy reduces the side-ef- fects which patients, particu- larly children, can suffer as a result of traditional forms of cancer treatment. “Once this service is in place, The Christie and UCLH will boast unparalleled cancer facilities. It will mean more patients will be able to get this treatment, including those for whom travelling abroad for long periods is not possible.” Andrew Lansley made a commitment to the programme in 2010 when he pledged over £50 million across the Spend- ing Review period to allow up to 400 high priority patients to be treated abroad while we developed the business case to establish a national service here. The Department of Health plans to introduce PBT servic- es at The Christie and UCLH. The Department’s assessment shows this to be affordable and deliverable in the short term. The development of the service will be closely moni- tored and should further ca- pacity be needed in the future, the preferred third site is Uni- versity Hospitals Birmingham, subject to normal business cases processes and the views of the NHS Commissioning Board. DT Centres selected to host cutting-edge cancer services A lcohol abuse causes dental disease and mouth can- cer warn health experts. To tackle this at the earliest op- portunity, screening and treat- ment for excessive drinking is vital, according to a paper pub- lished in the April edition of the Royal College of Surgeon’s Den- tal Journal. The paper, ‘Alcohol misuse: screening and treatment in primary dental care,’ points out that patients do not attend their GP unless they are ill, but most people visit their dentist for a routine check-up, giving the dental team a unique oppor- tunity to identify misuse. The paper highlights that making standard questions about alcohol consumption more explicit under new policy proposals could provide a cur- rently untapped opportunity to help individuals tackle prob- lem drinking, as asking patients about alcohol consumption is a routine component of un- derstanding a patients overall health. Jonathan Shepherd, Profes- sor of Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery and lead author of the paper, said: ‘Excessive alcohol consumption can lead to can- cer of the mouth, larynx and oesophagus and dentists maybe the first to notice these condi- tions. So we need to introduce an alcohol screening tool that reliably detects hazardous and harmful drinking alongside ef- fective treatment.’ The paper emphasises that an estimated one in five men and one in seven women in the UK regularly binge drink which costs the UK economy approxi- mately £25 billion a year. Pro- moting moderation in alcohol consumption in the primary dental setting could contribute to decreasing the economic, so- cial and health burdens associ- ated with alcohol abuse. The study stresses that iden- tifying and tackling alcohol misuse at the dentist would be a major contribution to the Gov- ernment’s health priorities. ‘The dental team has a responsibility to promote overall health and not just dental health. Dentists and the Government must work together to develop and deliver screening and treatment by in- tervening early,’ Shepherd con- cluded. DT Tackle alcohol abuse at the dentist I f you’re a dentist per- forming copyright mu- sic in your surgery, it has been announced that you do need a PRS for Music* licence. According to PRS, clarifica- tion on the requirement for a PRS for Music licence when playing music in a dental sur- gery following the decision of European Court of Justice (“the Court”) on 15 March 2012 in the case of Società Consortile Fonografici (SCF) v Marco Del Corso (“the Deci- sion”). The Decision concerns the liability of dentists to pay eq- uitable remuneration for what under Italian law is a statu- tory right to use sound record- ings by communicating them to the public. In its Decision, the Court held that such use by dentists to patients in their waiting rooms did not amount to a “communication to the public” with regard to this li- ability. The Decision does not af- fect the requirement for a busi- ness to hold the correct PRS for Music licence where they play or perform PRS for Music rep- ertoire in public. The Decision specifically dealt with the right of produc- ers and performers to remu- neration for certain uses of sound recordings, as provided for under Italian law. PRS for Music does not administer this right. PRS for Music administers, amongst other rights, the ex- clusive right conferred on the copyright owners by UK law, to perform and to authorise the performance in public of their copyright musical works. Therefore if you intend to continue performing our mu- sical works in your premises regardless of the means of performance, for example by radio, TV, CD, MP3 or live per- formance, then you will need a PRS for Music licence. Under UK law a performance is re- garded as taking place ‘in pub- lic’ if the audience comprises individuals outside of the com- poser’s domestic or home cir- cle. By not having, or cancel- ling an existing PRS for Music licence, you may be liable for infringement of copyright in PRS for Music’s repertoire. In the UK, the owners of the copyright in commercial sound recordings enjoy an exclusive right to play sound recordings in public. If you intend to con- tinue playing such recordings in public in your workplace, we suggest that you contact PPL to discuss your require- ments. www.ppluk.com DT *PRS for Music is the trad- ing name for the Performing Right Society (PRS). This in- formation relates to the rights represented by PRS. Clarification on licensing for dental surgeries Dentists performing copyright music in their surgery do need a PRS for Music* licence Surgeons perform full- face transplant S urgeons at the University of Maryland in Baltimore have reported the trans- plantation of an entire face onto a 37-year-old man. According to a report, the surgeons successfully trans- planted facial tissue, a tongue, teeth, and upper and lower jaw. The procedure is considered to be the world’s most extensive full-face transplant. The pa- tient Richard Lee Norris from Hillsville, Virginia, had the face transplant after a gun incident 15 years ago left him severely disfigured. Richard lost his lips and his nose, and his jaw- line was almost completely de- stroyed. As a result, he was left with limited movement of the mouth. It wasn’t until 2005 when Richard first approached doc- tors at the university to discuss surgical options. After a face was donated by the family of a deceased anonymous donor, the extensive and difficult sur- gery could commence, and was conducted in late March by a multidisciplinary team of more than 150 medical professionals and lasted 36 hours. According to the university, this is the first time in history that a full-face transplant has been completed by a team of plastic and recon- structive surgeons experienced in both trauma and dental and facial reconstruction. The project was financial- ly supported by the US Navy, which hopes to gain better in- sights into the reconstruction of the wounded faces of returning soldiers. DT April 23-29, 20124 News United Kingdom Edition