The start of a week of recuperation.

So I'm sitting at home on the first working day after my operation. I feel generally good, a little bit of post operative pain but nothing that isn't controlled with paracetamol. I generally feel like I have a heavy head cold but no worse than that, and I was told by the surgeon that this was what to expect.


This morning Rebecca and I took a quick trip into town, we made it in and town was fairly quiet. By the time we left the half term hoards had descended and all the car parks looked busy.


I'm taking the chance to catch up on some journal reading. I read a brilliant article in Dental Update. It was this month's guest leader by Martin Kelleher. In this article he discussed whether dentists as a group of professionals were doing the right thing by sacrificing sound enamel to cater for patients who wanted to improve the appearance of their teeth using veneers or crowns. In a provocative article, he argued that dentists were/are being seduced by dental material manufacturers into offering quick fixes for our patients by removing sound enamel and providing crowns. It also discussed the fact that our patients may not understand or did not have explained the long term consequences of having crowns or veneers. He argued the need for dentists to offer more conservative treatment options such as bonding with composite and/or tooth whitening. and also that we should have a fall back position, because in the end all dental treatments have the potential for failure.


I enjoyed this article and would recommend it to anyone practicing dentistry, it can be found in Dental Update in the January/February 2010 edition. There is plenty of content here to ponder.