Dental Tribune U.S. Edition No. 2, 2018

HYGIENE TRIBUNE The World’s Dental Hygiene Newspaper · U.S. Edition FEBRUARY 2018 — Vol. 11, No. 1 www.dental-tribune.com A look back at the ADHA meeting Observatious from the ‘City of Bridges’ By Patricia Walsh, RDH Editor in Chief, Hygiene Tribune Once upon a time, in the land of bridges and crowns, a purple- cloaked prophy queen reigned over her happy subjects. So beloved was she that her ladies in waiting tucked her into bed each night at the Hy- att Regency. Now it had to be the Regency, didn’t it? A plain old ordinary Hyatt would not befit the queen of hygiene, especially during the American Dental Hygienists’ Associa- tion 94th Annual Conference. In addition to attracting the prophy queen (a giant Vera prophy angle, adorned with a tiara and holding court in the Young Dental booth), to this “City of Bridges,” the con- ference brought together dental hygien- ists from throughout the country to the Prime Osborn Convention Center, June 14–17, to “learn, engage and advance.” Change is in the air Many of the lectures I attended were peppered with comments that reflect- ed the hope that someday every state would allow a form of advanced dental hygiene to be practiced. The discussions about hygienists as mid-level provid- ers strengthened my backbone. With the advancement of real-time teledentistry, the “supervised-exam” argument falls by the wayside. And now that our existing mid-level providers have been practic- ing for a decade, proponents can point to treatment statistics to document the exact number of patients served with no “hospitalizations and/or deaths.” It’s no longer a fairy tale. The value of mid-level providers can be quantified with facts and figures. Jennifer Berge, ADT, RDH, described to attendees exactly what it is like to serve patients within this increased scope of practice. At Healthfinders Collaborative in Northfield and Faribault, Minn. (health fiudersmu.org), she is empowered to per- form certain restorative procedures. Her experience confirms that oral health-care services will expand and modernize not ” See ADHA, page A18 Left, the prophy queen (a giant Vera prophy angle axornex with a tiara) holxs court in the Young Dental booth in the ADHA annual conference exhibit hall. Below, Queen Vera is tuckex in for the night at the Hyatt Regency. Photos/ Provided by Young Dental Blasting dental plaque with microbubbles Whether through an accident or a disease, teeth loss can cause many in- conveniences. Dental implants such as crowns, however, have allowed people to overcome most of these and live a better quality of life. But just like normal teeth, these dental implants require proper care and oral hy- giene to prevent further complications, such as the inflammation of the tissues surrounding the implants. While the buildup of dental plaque sticks mainly to the crown, it also adheres to the exposed parts of the screw that holds the den- tal fixture in place, and these are much harder to clean because they contain mi- crogrooves that make them fit better into the upper or lower jaw bones. Hitoshi Soyama from Tohoku Univer- sity and his team from Showa University in Japan conducted a study to look for better ways for dentists to remove this plaque and prevent complications. The team wanted to study the efficiency of a cavitating jet, where high-speed fluid is injected by a nozzle through water to create very tiny bubbles of vapor. When these bubbles collapse, they produce strong shock waves that are able to re- move contaminants. The team compared the cleaning ef- fect of a cavitating jet to that of a water jet, which has been used for a long time to remove plaque from dental implants to keep them clean. They grew a biofilm over three days within the mouths of four volunteers, then proceeded to clean that with the two different methods, measuring the amount of plaque re- maining at several time intervals. While there was little difference be- tween the amounts of dental plaque removed by both methods after one minute of cleaning, that changed after longer exposure. After three minutes, the cavitating jet had removed about a third more plaque than the water jet did, leaving little plaque stuck to the implant at the end of the experiment. The cavitating jet was also able to re- move the plaque not only from the root section of the screws, but also from the harder-to-reach crest section, though to a lesser extent. “Conventional methods cannot clean plaques on the surface of dental implants very well, so this new method could give dentists a new tool to better manage The researchers usex a certain type of nozzle to create the cavitation bubbles, which removex the plaque when they collapsex. Photo/Provided by Tohoku University these fixtures, which are becoming more common,” says Soyama. when cleaning the plaque off the irregu- lar surface of dental implants. Previous research has shown that wa- ter flow exerts shear stress to remove the biofilm. In addition to this shear ef- fect, the cavitating jet also produces a considerable force when the bubbles collapse that is able to remove particles from the biofilm and carry them away. The researchers suggest that the two pro- cesses probably work in synergy to make the cavitating jet superior to the water jet The full article, “Removal of Oral Bio- film on an Implant Fixture by a Cavitat- ing Jet,” by Junki Yamada, DDS, Takashi Takiguchi, DDS, Akihiro Saito, DDS, Hibiki Odanaka, DDS, Hitoshi Soyama PhD, and Matsuo Yamamoto, DDS, can be found in the Journal of Implant Den- tistry, Dec. 2017, Vol. 26, Issue 6. (Source: Tohoku University)

Dental Tribune U.S. Edition No. 2, 2018

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