Sprig Oral Health Technologies has named Brenda Hansen as its new CEO. Hansen previously served as executive director of EZPEDO, Sprig’s previous brand. She was responsible for operations, business development, and strategic partnerships.
After two years of planning, California has finally offered a look at what the state’s oral health plan may be like. The state’s dental director, Jayanth Kumar, DDS, MPH, outlined broad concepts and frameworks for the plan in the August 2017 edition of the Journal of the California Dental Association. Jayanth Kumar, DDS, MPH. In an introduction and article in the journal, Dr. Kumar provides an idea of what may be
Dear DrBicuspid Member, What’s the biggest obstacle to patient case acceptance? Is it money or insurance? Is it scheduling issues? Maybe patients’ lack of understanding about how important oral healthcare is for their overall health? Or maybe it is none of those things. Practice management consultant Jen Butler has the answer. Learn more here. Also this week on HuangshanDental.com, hard-tissue lasers have been praised as a replacement to drills for
Straumann Group has acquired clear aligner manufacturer ClearCorrect. The acquisition price was approximately $150 million, and the deal is expected to be finalized before the end of 2017, according to ClearCorrect. ClearCorrect will maintain its name and corporate leadership. Straumann is the parent company of Neodent and other brands. This acquisition gives the company access to the orthodontics market.
What is your patient’s mouth worth? Patients probably take for granted that they can eat almost anything they want and enjoy the taste and chewing satisfaction of the food. Not to mention that this is the only way to get nourishment into your body unless you’re hooked up to an intravenous drip. So, what if our patients had no teeth to chew this delicious food? If they wanted to regain
Hard-tissue lasers have been praised as a replacement to drills for basic restorative procedures, which is why researchers decided to take a closer look at how one type, the erbium-doped yttrium aluminium garnet (Er:YAG) laser, affected dentin’s physical and chemical properties. The Er:YAG laser increased dentin surface hardness but decreased the calcium-phosphorous ratio compared with conventional drills, the researchers found. Their findings were published in Lasers in Medical Science (August
If enamel erosion could be accurately measured, preventive measures could be taken to preserve tooth enamel. However, there are no in vivo diagnostic tests to measure erosion activity. To address this need, researchers from the U.K. wanted to find out if roughness data from one central location on a tooth was representative of that tooth’s overall surfaces before and after erosion. While they initially thought they would need a larger
The way we take care of our teeth can be linked to heart problems, diabetes, and other health concerns. Sadly, sometimes taking proper care of our smile is not enough to prevent other dental diseases. So, what to do when a visit to our dentist of trust is not enough? Dental injuries and defects can affect our smiles aesthetically and functionally. Lucky for all of us, oral and maxillofacial surgery
For most patients, agreeing to implant treatment takes multiple case presentations. Why? Implants are expensive, requiring significant out-of-pocket costs. In addition, they involve surgery, as in dental surgery. Those are two words that few people want to hear, yet the benefits of implants are numerous and life-changing. Present early and often. In the early stages, implant case presentation is often a series of continuing conversations. There’s a lot to talk
Dear DrBicuspid Member, In the first study to look at the long-term outcomes of communities served by dental therapists, researchers from the University of Washington have found that children in Alaska Native communities had lower rates of tooth extractions and more preventive care than those in communities not receiving services from these practitioners. Read more here. The study mentioned above includes 10 years of data on utilization rates and outcomes
Silver diamine fluoride (SDF) was found to be safe and 100% effective in stopping active caries in primary teeth of at-risk children and was also well-accepted by their parents in a new study, published in the Journal of Public Health Dentistry. The small, short-term clinical trial included the use of SDF on 100 carious lesions on the primary teeth of 30 children, and the researchers found all the lesions were
The National Institutes of Health (NIH) has granted more than $1.7 million to a University of Utah researcher to identify how genetic mutations influence a protein pathway responsible for permanent tooth formation. Rena D’Souza, DDS, PhD, a professor of dentistry at the university’s School of Dentistry, and her team will study the relationship between the gene PAX9, which is linked with tooth development, and the WNT pathway, a family of
