Dental Tribune United Kingdom Edition

United Kingdom Edition March 11-17, 2013 D entists and hygienists across the UK were polled alongside 1,000 consumers by sugarfree gum brand Extra® to examine cur- rent oral health understanding and behaviour. Nearly half (42 per cent) of the UK dentists and hygien- ists polled identified ‘grazers’ – people who eat small meals and snacks throughout the day – as one of the groups most at risk of developing oral health problems. And the major- ity (84 per cent) believe that awareness of the oral health- care issues surrounding ‘graz- ing’ is low. Snacking, rather than eating three meals a day, prevents the mouths’ pH lev- els from stabilising and the acid attacks caused by food are more frequent and prolonged. The survey also identified office workers as the worst culprits for snacking at their desks, with 40 per cent ad- mitting to snacking through- out the day. People who drink wine or mixed long drinks three or more times a week (51 per cent) and coffee shop regulars (23 per cent) were also high risk catego- ries, suggesting how modern work and lifestyle trends are contributing to poor oral health habits. The majority (79 per cent) of dental profession- als questioned believed that most patients are failing to follow even the simplest oral care recommendations – such as brushing for two minutes twice a day. Dentists’ con- cerns are substantiated by the consumer research, which revealed that a fifth of of- fice based employees (21 per cent) regularly miss brush- ing their teeth in their rush to get to work. And when they do brush a massive 88 per cent fail to do so for the recommended two minutes. DT ‘Snackers’ at greater risk of problems C T texture analysis of pri- mary tumours may be a potential imaging bio- marker in localised oesophageal cancer following neoadjuvant chemotherapy, according to re- search presented at the 2013 Cancer Imaging and Radiation Therapy Symposium. This study evaluated the tu- moural texture analysis on base- line and post-treatment CT scans of 31 patients with localised re- sectable oesophageal cancer pa- tients with a median age of 63 and who received neoadjuvant chemotherapy between 2007 and 2010. CT scans were performed before and after the use of chem- otherapy and prior to surgery. All patients received platinum and fluorouracil-based chemothera- py followed by surgery. Primary tumours became more homogenous follow- ing chemotherapy, as entropy decreased and uniformity in- creased. Smaller change in skew- ness following chemotherapy was a significant prognostic facto. Lower baseline entropy and low- er post-treatment MGI were also associated with improved surviv- al, although they demonstrated only a trend toward significance. “Though these results are for a very small number of pa- tients, they suggest that the tu- moural texture features may provide valuable information that could help us to distinguish which patients will do well fol- lowing chemotherapy and which ones will do poorly,” said Connie Yip, MD, the lead study author, a clinical research fellow at King’s College London, United King- dom and an associate consultant in radiation oncology at the Na- tional Cancer Centre, Singapore. “As a biomarker for treatment ef- ficacy, this technique could save patients from unnecessary sur- gery and provide more definitive guidance in developing patient treatment plans with improved outcomes.” DT F urther work is underway to improve the General Dental Council’s han- dling of complaints against dental professionals. A raft of changes, which began in 2011, have already been implemented to its Fit- ness to Practise system, and further improvements are currently taking place. Some key measurements show the progress made so far: • The number of cases com- pleted at the investigation stage within six months of being received has increased from 68 per cent at the end of 2011 to 85 per cent at the end of 2012; • There has been an increase of 13 per cent at the end of 2012 for cases progressed from Investigating Committee to reaching a Hearing within nine months compared to the end of 2011; • There has been a reduction in the length of the queue of cases awaiting a hearing to 129 at the end of 2012 com- pared to the 155 at the first quarter of 2011; Some of the changes intro- duced to try to tackle are: • Procedures throughout the entire process have been re- viewed and improved and new operating guidance has been published to document the new system; • More Investigating Com- mittee meetings are being scheduled and legally quali- fied Investigating Committee managers have been appoint- ed to support the Committee to ensure that all information needed to make decisions is provided to the committee; • A new triage process has been introduced to scrutinise cases as soon as they arrive to plan what action needs to be taken, or to close cases early on if appropriate to do so; • The National Clinical As- sessment Service is providing early clinical input to cases before the initial assessment of a case to ensure that case- workers are fully apprised of the significance of clinical matters raised from an early stage in the case. 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