Mr Sebastian Evans

The inauguration of the BDTA’s new president, Edward Attenborough, took place at the Association’s Midwinter Meeting in London on Thursday (10 December). His presidency officially commencing on 1 January 2010. Edward takes over from Simon Gambold, managing director of Henry Schein Dental, who has served as president since 2007. Edward Attenborough said: ‘Simon has served…

A vaccine is being developed that will treat periodontitis – and could be available to dentists if human trials are a success. Australian drug makers CSL say the vaccine in is the advanced stages of development and is sealing a deal with a global vaccine maker that would initially support further and expanded research. An…

I have to be honest with you, I won’t be sorry to see the back of 2009. It started off nicely enough – for me at least – but, by the time it’s done and dusted, it will have left us with many unanswered questions about the future direction of British dentistry.Almost unnoticed, we are…

Scientists are suggesting mercury amalgam dental fillings may be less toxic than previously thought. That’s the verdict of a new study appearing online in ACS Publication’s journal Chemical Research in Toxicology. The scientists analysed the surface of freshly prepared metal fillings and compared these with the surface of aged fillings (about 20 years old) from…

Applications for 2010 to a dental school have risen by 32% following a phenomenal 122% last year. The figures for the Peninsula Dental School – the first new dental school in the UK for 40 years and established in 2006 – has outstripped national trends, where applications for dentistry are up by around 10%. This…

The Department of Health will not be seeking NICE guidance on the HTM 01-05 decontamination guidelines for dental surgeries, despite calls to do so from outraged dentists. The National Institute for Clinical Excellence (NICE) develops national clinical guidelines to ‘secure consistent, high quality, evidence-based care for patients’. Chief dental officer for England, Barry Cockcroft, maintains…

If you think that hailing a cab for patients and paying for it to get them to their appointments on time is a bit excessive, then you may be missing a trick. In the midst of a recession, dentists are having to crank up their efforts in enticing patients back into the dentist’s chair. And…

The 2009 Dentistry Awards was a resounding success, leaving winning dental practice teams ‘on a high’ after claiming they’d had ‘a night we will never forget’. More than 500 guests attended last Friday’s event at The Athena in Leicester, travelling back to the seventies for a night of roller skates, bright neon outfits and fabulous…

Dentists are being offered a new service designed to wrap up the business of website design in one easy package. Dentistry magazine and www.dentistry.co.uk are offering to help practices who would like a web presence and, at the very low price of £795 + VAT, practitioners get a ‘plug and play’ website of high quality.…

I’ve been in my current role for three years. I am responsible for co-ordinating a variety of oral health improvement programmes within NHS Lanarkshire. Most of these initiatives have been results of the Action Plan for Improving Oral Health and Modernising NHS Dental Services in Scotland which was published by the Scottish Executive. I’m also…

A Newcastle dental student has won the Junior Colgate Prize at the British Society for Dental Research (BSDR) conference in Glasgow. Rhiannon Davies (BDS 2009) won the prize for her paper entitled ‘Do patients with aggressive periodontitis have subclinical diabetes?’. She will now represent the BSDR in the Junior Hatton Prize competition at the International…

Alison White has been appointed as interim chief executive and registrar of the General Dental Council (GDC). Alison has a strong track record of strategic development, leadership and business results, in both the public and private sectors. As a commercial chartered director, Alison’s recent experience has included the health and skills sectors. She has been…

Since computers started to become widely available to small businesses, information technology has been playing a greater role in the way that small businesses operate on a day-to-day basis.  This has been happening to such an extent that now most businesses take their IT systems for granted, and don’t appreciate the extent to which they…

A dental technology firm looks set to sign a distribution agreement covering all of North America within weeks if it gains regulatory approval for the US this month. Cariescan, the Dundee-based producer of hand-held devices for the early detection of tooth decay – and a subsidiary of 3D Diagnostic Imaging – previously struck a UK distribution…