A new lawsuit claims that despite evidence of harm caused by dental amalgam, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has delayed protecting the public’s health against mercury tooth fillings. Plaintiffs in the suit, which was filed March 5 by Tulsa, OK, attorney James M. Love, include the International Academy of Oral Medicine and Toxicology, according to a sott.net story. The largest user of dental amalgam is the U.S. government,
Dentistry is sounding the alarm about early childhood caries (ECC) as data roll in about its long-term impact on oral health. Now a new study has the potential to give dentists another tool to help parents understand how their own oral health affects that of their very young children. The researchers have shed more light on the relationship between the oral health of mothers and their children in a study
A visit to the dentist could one day require a detailed look at how genes in a patient’s body are being switched on or off, according to a new study in the Australian Dental Journal (February 24, 2014). Researchers from the University of Adelaide School of Dentistry have written about the current and future use of the field of epigenetics as it relates to oral health, according to a press
The U.S. dental materials market is expected to grow to nearly $1.5 billion by 2020, according to a new report from Research and Markets. Entitled “US Market for Dental Materials,” the report contains information on companies such as 3M ESPE, Carestream, Dentsply, Kerr, and many more. The report covers from 2010 to 2020, and the authors expect the dental materials market to grow substantially to nearly $1.5 billion by 2020, up
Injectable local anesthetics, especially lidocaine and benzocaine, are among the most common medications administered in the dental office, and there is a real potential for their diversion to illegal drug producers, according to the authors of a new article in the Journal of the American Dental Association (March 2014, Vol. 145:3, pp. 256-259). Drug adulterants not only dilute illicit drugs for profit increase, but also give drug users the illusion
Surgeons at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore have removed a rare brain tumor containing several teeth from a 4-month-old baby boy. The tumor was an adamantinomatous craniopharyngioma, a slow-growing mass that can press up against the pituitary gland and optic nerve and cause pressure in the brain. It is mostly found in young children. Only five other cases in medical literature found teeth in these types of tumors, Edward Ahn,
The U.S. Supreme Court will examine the North Carolina dental board’s claim that teeth-whitening should only be done by dentists. The justices on March 3 agreed to hear the North Carolina Board of Dental Examiners’ challenge to a lower court ruling and an order by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), according to an Associated Press story. The FTC’s original complaint against the dental board was issued in 2010, pertaining to
Byproducts in the form of small-chain fatty acids from two bacteria prevalent in periodontal disease incite the growth of deadly Kaposi’s sarcoma (KS)-related oral lesions and tumors, according to a new study by researchers from Case Western Reserve University (Journal of Virology, February 5, 2014). The discovery could lead to early saliva testing for the bacteria, which, if found, could be treated and monitored for signs of cancer and before
The going rate for lost baby teeth had major gains in 2013. The average gift from the tooth fairy climbed to $3.50 last year, up from $2.42 in 2012, according to Delta Dental’s annual Original Tooth Fairy Poll. This 45% rise surpassed the outstanding performances of the major U.S. stock indexes. The company touted the poll as “a good barometer of the market’s overall direction.” In fact, the trend in
To pull or not to pull is a common dilemma when patients have the potentially dangerous combination of abscessed teeth and the need for heart surgery. In such cases, problem teeth often are extracted before surgery, to reduce the risk of infections, including endocarditis, an infection of the inner lining of the heart that can be fatal. But research by practitioners at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, MN, found that
Assessing disorders of the temporomandibular joint (TMJ) is not always straightforward. Can the process be improved? A new study has evaluated the impact of cone-beam CT (CBCT) on diagnosis and management with striking results. “Assessment of cone-beam CT led to changes in primary diagnosis and management in more than half the patients with disorders of the TMJ,” researchers from the University of Groningen in the Netherlands wrote in the British
A funny thing happened on the way to my fortune; the world changed, turning my beloved profession from slam-dunk bankability to a bad business model. Now as dentists we all studied the second law of thermodynamics in college, so we know that the universe moves from order to increased randomness (as German physicist Rudolf Clausius wrote, “The entropy of the universe tends to a maximum”). This is the scientific way