Archive for General
July 8, 2007 at 8:09 pm by Ian Kerr
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I have recently returned from a much needed long weekend in Rome. My wife, Shelley, and I went with four close friends (and no children) for our annual “stick a pin in the map” weekend away.
We stayed in a very basic (yet very expensive) hotel right by the Spanish Steps and managed to spend every minute either walking round every building, monument or fountain built more than 10 years ago. The weather was beautiful and the food was everything we had hoped for and more.
I have uploaded a couple of photos the last of which shows clearly how we were all able to blend in seamlessly with the locals, just like the social chameleons we are!
June 11, 2007 at 10:15 pm by Ian Kerr
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I have just got back from an amazing weekend in Turku, Finland where I was attending the everStick 10-year anniversary. “everStick” is a product that we use in dentistry to restore very broken down teeth, often avoiding the need for a laboratory made crown. It is an amazing product and it is transforming the way that we think about dentistry.
I was lucky enough to be involved in the presentations through my work with Jansie van Rensburg who has been working with these fibres for many years. Jansie and I gave a brief lecture each to a group of interested dentists, here in the UK before we went to Finland and the response on both occasions was very positive. We hope to give many more lectures and hands on courses over the next few months and years and I hope to return to Finland soon to further my skills in this very exciting area in dentistry.
Clearly it wasn’t all work over in Turku and we were treated to a splendid day touring the stunning archipelago that surrounds this south west coast of Finland. I’ve posted a photo of this trip, just to show that I do occasionally leave my surgery.
May 10, 2007 at 7:35 pm by Ian Kerr
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Wow! 2 years ago today we opened our doors to the public. There was me, my nurse Amie, who along with Vikki made up the clinical team, Julie my practice manager/receptionist and Vanessa who is now my senior receptionist but who was then working in the mornings before nursery runs doing the cleaning.
Together we have seen the practice balloon in to a thriving, very busy multi discipline centre of excellence, of which we are all extremely proud. We will be celebrating our anniversary in a weeks time and from that initial team of four we have now expanded to fourteen, meaning we are in for quite a lively night out!
Thank you to all of the team, to all of the patients and to Hawkhurst village for making it all so successful.
May 7, 2007 at 2:51 pm by Ian Kerr
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As promised I have been to the annual British Society of Restorative Dentists (BSRD) meeting, this year held in Brighton, and was able to hear some fascinating views on how to restore teeth and mouths. The conference covered all aspects of restorative work (crowns and fillings etc.) giving equal weight to conventional techniques and modern adhesive techniques. It also gave us a great view of the future with a brilliant insight into the science of growing teeth from stem cells.
This process, whereby the stem cells from which all teeth grow are identified and then implanted in to the jaw bone, has been developed over the past 15 years and is slowly coming of age. There have been no attempts to try this in humans yet but the technology has been shown to be very successful in animal studies. The stem cells needed are found in, amongst other places, the pulp of deciduous or milk teeth. The proposed treatment scenario is that exfoliated milk teeth would be stored and the pulp frozen to give a reservoir of stem cells for use later in life if the second set are lost or damaged beyond repair. Not surprisingly there is already a website offering this service,although the techniques required to carry out this procedure are not yet developed. The gamble that the website (www.bioeden.com) is asking people to take is basically a financial one ($600 or there abouts) to see if the techniques do indeed get developed and are viable. It works on the principle of “better to have and not need then to need and not have” and is probably not an unreasonable proposition albeit a little premature. My son, Oscar, is three years old and will start loosing teeth in 3 years time. I do not expect to see the technology perfected by then but by the time he stops loosing teeth in approximately 10 years it may well be the case that we are all banking our children’s milk teeth to have as an emergency back up should their second set fail to form properly or become damaged beyond repair. My gut feeling is that at least one of his teeth and his elders sisters will be used in this way but not for at least five years time, and probably not at the expense of the tooth fairy’s livelihood.
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