Spicer Road Dental Practice has a new tooth whitening offer!

Now the evenings are drawing in and the clocks have gone back, we can now say winter is coming, and with that Christmas too.

With Christmas coming you may be looking forward to a special occasion. You may have an event coming up where a brighter, whiter smile would be just the thing to make a statement. Not only would your new outfit make you stand out from the crowd but your friends and family could be dazzled by the confidence given to you by your brighter, whiter smile!

So as a special offer for the coming holiday season we are pleased to annouce our Winter Whitening offer at the Spicer Road Dental Practice. 

For an investment of £260, a brighter, whiter smile could be yours in time for the holiday season.

For more information and terms and conditions please visit our website here.

21 years qualified as a dentist, how things have changed!

I was thinking back on my years as a dentist and I realised in December of this year I have been qualified for 21 years. This led me to reflect on what has changed since I was a student and on what techniques and materials the profession has adopted. Ask any dentist what has been the biggest change in dentistry in the last two decades and I will bet you will a massive variety of answers. 

Whether it be the replacement of missing teeth with dental implants, the development of tooth coloured filling materials that can reliably bond to teeth, the increased and almost routine use of magnification by dentist for carrying out operative procedures, the development and improvement in dental ceramics that help us to beautiful and lifelike crowns, bridges and veneers or the systems that help us reliably and predictably carry out root canal treatments.

For me advances that have had the biggest impact on my everyday practice are the improvements made to tooth coloured fillings and nickel titanium files that are used to carry out root canal treatments.

I would like to right about some the kit and gadgets that I like to use to enable me to carry out root canal treatments. About five years ago I decided to invest in a set of loupes, I own a set of nuview loupes with 3.5x magnification and also a LED light that mounts on the frame of the loupes.

The improvement in vision I get with these is amazing. One tip if any dentists read this, if you get a set of loupes, invest in a light too, until I purchased a light I couldn't see why everybody was so enthused about loupes and extra magnification, purchasing a light vastly improved my experience with loupes. 

The other pieces of kit that have dramatically changed my experience in providing root canal treatments are the use of an electronic apex locator and the use of rotary endodontic files. I specifically use a Raypex 4 apex locator and the Dentsply X Smart with protaper files. 

Using the electronic apex locator I can accurately confirm the length of a patients tooth and reduce the number of radiographs (x-rays) that I take and using the X Smart motor with rotary files I can easily prepare the tooth to receive a root filling.

Using this kit I can produce results like this.

The radiograph (x-ray) shown is from a real patient of mine, he present with severe pain from one of his molar teeth, using the equipment I have talked about and my skills as a dentist we have managed to save and preserve his tooth.

Mouthguards, Why we dentists think they are important.

Half term is here and it possible that many of our patient's have taken up a new sport at school.


Protect your smile, it is the only one you have, and to damage it would be devastating. It will also mean you may need many years of work to repair your smile.


Here's a poster that we are displaying at our dental practice.

Prices for a custom fitted mouthuard start from £59.

For appointments contact our reception team on 01392 272408, or visit our website.

Back to the realities of work.

Just reached the end of a pretty busy week in work. Dentistry has been enjoyable, it has been great repairing, restoring and building new smiles for my patients. I've managed to fit some high quality laboratory work and I've been pleased with the results I've achieved.


My biggest gripe is the end of year chase for UDA's. Three years ago a new contract was introduced into NHS dentistry, we agreed to provide a certain number of UDAs each year for twelve equal payments from our NHS masters. Working with this contract for three years now I can see that it is pretty much unworkable, with all the advantages being given to the government, fortunately we tend to see only children under the NHS but the impact of the contract is still significant. Unfortunately due to various factors that have occurred over the year it appears that I will fall short on my performance target again. Its not that I have done anything different in terms of treatment planning, I possibly have missed more work-time this year due to the cancellations of my operation, I think in all this has equated to 3.5 weeks. Also the turn of the year was affected by adverse weather and we probably had a higher number of cancellations and failures due to the weather. My shortfall is equivalent to just under a month of work, I wonder when our annual review occurs whether our local PCT will make any allowances for these factors. To be honest probably not.


On a more positive note, I have several interesting cases  in the pipeline, I will try to document these both in words and pictures and if the patients are willing, to display the results here.


So roll on the weekend, hopefully the weather will improve.