Sebastian Evans

I’m on the road a lot, sharing systems with thousands of dentists and their teams. Recently, a dentist asked me: ‘What is the most limiting “mistaken certainty” that dentists have?’ I’d like to share with you my response by first revealing what the largest field survey ever conducted on success says. As you may know,…

The British Dental Association (BDA) has criticised a proposal to increase the regulatory powers the NHS has over the dental profession. The association is taking issue with the practicality of having an employer acting as a regulator. It also points out that the majority of dentists are not employed by the NHS anyway, but practise…

The nights are drawing in and the temperature is dropping. Fresher’s week is little more than a distant memory and there’s still weeks to go until Christmas. The work’s piling up and if you find yourself starting to pine for home, don’t panic because homesickness affects us all. Homesickness has many causes and affects different…

The patient highlighted in this article was a 20-year-old female with a clear medical history. She presented with a missing upper premolar which had been extracted two months earlier due to dental caries. The extraction was carried out with a view to replacing this tooth with a dental implant. A standard plus aesthetic dental implant…

In the last article I discussed how a crown might be retained by an implant, either screw retained or cement retained, explaining the rationale for each. The process of fitting crowns can have its difficulties, though, and I’ll identify some of these here. Consider the single tooth. Fitting a cement-retained crown Cement retained crowns will…

Once it was only a problem for the rich, but today a third of UK households are now liable for Inheritance Tax (IHT) – and this almost certainly includes many people in the dental profession. As house prices continue to rise, more and more people are discovering that, often due to the cost of their…

I have reviewed a number of dental employment contracts lately, from those employed in either the NHS or private sectors. The level of sick pay provided by these contracts varies considerably, and it is quite alarming how little some contracts offer sick dentists. Whatever area of dentistry you practice in, do you know what your…

The new contracts have, in the main, changed many practitioners’ view of where they see themselves today, tomorrow and in the coming years. With this is in mind, dentists need to consider the knock-on effect these changes may have on their retirement plans. If you are in a mainly NHS practice, your retirement is relatively…

Whether you are buying a new home or rearranging your existing mortgage, there are thousands of mortgage products now available from hundreds of lenders. So how do you ensure you are getting the deal which best suits your circumstances? Should you be looking at a fixed, tracker or discounted rate? Do you need to borrow…

Tooth sensitivity is one of the most detrimental side effects experienced by patients during bleaching procedures. It is very common to experience some type of sensitivity while bleaching teeth and during home bleaching it affects up to 80% of patients. These symptoms range from mild awareness of the teeth to an actual throb or toothache…

It was suggested to me that I write an article on peri-mucositis and peri-implantitis. This is a challenge for me because I do not know very much about it. Strange, you may think, an article coming from somebody who performs dental implant treatments and yet is so dumb about the subject. One of my difficulties…

Increasing consumer awareness about the range of cosmetic dental treatments available, and their benefits, has led to surge in patient demand for these procedures in the UK. Figures released by the British Academy of Cosmetic Dentistry (BACD) in 2005 valued the market at an estimated £280 million, an increase of 25% compared to 2004. It’s…

Many newly qualified dentists start their careers working in a practice owned by somebody else. In my experience, when starting any new job, it’s necessary to consider three things: • Employee induction • Contracts • Team integration. Offering an orientation or induction period to a new employee is indicative of a good employer and helps…

Straumann recently opened the doors to its new, multi-functional and highly impressive UK base. Dentistry took up its invite. . . Straumann celebrated the grand opening of its new UK headquarters and the ITI UK Education Centre in style earlier this month. Guests were invited to a special evening at the venue where presentations were…

A new non-profit dental practice offering NHS care has opened in Grantham. An investment package of £437,100 from Futurebuilders England supported the East Midlands Community Dental Association, which trades as Genesis Dental Care, to set up three new practices in Grantham, Lincoln and South Normanton. The first surgery, which opened yesterday in Grantham on Social…

Unlike a tooth where a crown can only be cemented to the prepared tooth or post and core, in implant dentistry a crown may be either cemented to an abutment or screwed to an abutment. Cement retained An implant-retained crown may be cemented onto an abutment, the abutment being one of many types. What is…

I recently received the following question from a reader: ‘What’s your opinion on using a cotton pellet with formocresol? We are taking on two-session endodontics, which is what I tend to do generally. . .’ This is a multi-layered question and, while much has been written on the topic in general, the literature is not…

Experts like to list the top reasons why patients leave dental practices. These lists are then graded, based upon the number of times each reason was given per thousand respondents. Is the information they come up with representative of every dentist? It’s actually representative of no dentist. It’s a statistician’s dream, and a practice owner’s…

Do you ever have times when a piece of text all but leaps up from the page and hits you between the eyes? I had that experience recently when studying a Bible commentary. I read ‘Repetition is the secret of the teacher’s success’ and thought it very profound in relation to dentistry. In many ways…