australia dental

Sunday, February 24, 2013

Zila encounters challenging economical times

The present economical problems is constantly on the create chaos with the economical results of many dental item providers. One of the newest to review a down economy is Zila, the maker of the ViziLite Plus dental cancer testing item.

Zila declared this week that it did not make a sports convertible note interest payment due Jan 31 and may have to file for Section 11 bankruptcy protection unless it can take care of its debt.

Zila revealed a net lack of $25.3 thousand on earnings of $8.5 thousand in the second one fourth of financial 2009 (end-January 31), compared to a net lack of $4.7 thousand on earnings of $10.5 thousand in the same one fourth in 2008.

The reduction was due mainly to a $23.2 thousand noncash charge needed under bookkeeping guidelines, Zila said. The decrease in earnings is being linked to the international recession and customer issue about its stability as an continuous company, according to the company.

"We are making every effort to preserve our cash," said Bob Bethune, chair and CEO of Zila, in an argument. "We have, among other things, ongoing wage discount rates for a variety of management employees, further decreased headcount throughout the company, removed the worker stock purchase plan and its associated costs, furloughed certain development manufacturing employees, decreased the variety of conference applications and structured the cost framework of these applications, and decreased tradeshow expenses."

As a result of the specialized standard and sales decreases, the company mentioned that it has significant doubt about its ability to proceed as a going issue.

"In order to proceed as an continuous company and finance our functions over the next 12 months, we will require additional resources and need to rebuild our mature properly secured sports convertible notices," Bethune said. "We have had conversations with a variety of potential traders, all of whom have needed, as a condition of their investment, that the mature properly secured sports convertible notices be paid back from the resources provided by the investor(s) and that this pay back be at a significant discount from the $12.0 thousand major excellent to indicate what they believe to be the market value of those notices."

Monday, February 18, 2013

NYSDA criticizes oral medical center closures

NYSDA criticizes oral medical center closures

The New You are able to Condition Dental Association (NYSDA) is demeaning New You are able to Town Gran Eileen Bloomberg's suggested closings of New You are able to Town Department of Wellness oral treatment centers, according to an argument.

The closures, part of capturing citywide cuts declared lately by the mayor, would effect 44 public health oral treatment centers serving 17,000 of the town's neediest kids.

"Shutting down New You are able to City's oral system shows a lack of knowledge of the effect of oral disease on the of New Yorkers, and shows a neglect for the town's most insecure communities who most need and benefit from entry to these programs," said Stephen Gold, D.D.S., NYSDA president and a childrens dental professional, in the news launch.

The NYSDA lately endorsed for regulation demanding the region's university regions to request that kids receive a oral examination before entering university. New You are able to Town schools obtained an omission from the law because the town was already providing sufficient entry to kids for tests and solutions. The town's school-based oral treatment centers have been the principal resource for ensuring the accessibility to these solutions.

Transitioning patients from the treatment centers to a Medicaid-based system as others have suggested would not be the answer, the NYSDA said in its news launch. Despite the town's considerable patient registration in both Condition medicaid programs and Child Wellness Plus and the exceptionally high number of dental practitioners available to see these kids, the NYSDA said it considers that New You are able to Town performs badly with respect to kids getting effective preventive oral treatment.

New You are able to City's Condition medicaid programs system reports the lowest rates of kids getting sealants in New You are able expressing, according to the NYSDA.

Regional categories maintain management of Higher NY Dental

Regional categories maintain management of Higher NY Dental

Looks like the Higher New You are able to Oral Conference -- charged as the biggest dental meeting on the globe -- will stay in the arms of the two local categories that have lengthy co-sponsored it: the New You are able to Nation Oral Community (NYCDS) and the Second Region Oral Community (SDDS).

Last July, after the New You are able to Legislature elected to look at a invoice that would provide the New You are able to Condition Oral Organization (NYSDA) the right to "expel" the NYCDS, there was a quantity of editorials in New You are able to magazines asking the purposes of many of those engaged, such as New You are able to Gov. Bob Paterson.

Last weeks time, the NYSDA panel made the choice to keep well enough alone.

"Our panel did elect this season to have another element providing New york, but at last week's panel meeting they made the choice not to do this," said Sandra DiNoto, the association's home of advertising. "They elected to have only one element providing one county." She dropped to opinion further on the board's choice.

As a outcome, the association that was established a few months ago to take the place of the NYCDS -- the New york Oral Organization -- has been disbanded.

"For a time there was a second element providing that place, but they do not are available any longer," DiNoto said. "The NYCDS provides New york."

She also ignored rumours that management of the meeting might have altered had the NYSDA worked out its right to get rid of the NYCDS.

"The Higher New You are able to Oral Conference has always been a individual, individual company of the two local county dental categories," DiNoto said. "It was never aspect of this formula."

Thus it will be company as regular at this seasons Higher New You are able to Oral Conference, which reveals Nov 28 at the Edward K. Javits Meeting Middle and operates through Dec 3.

"There are no changes with the Higher New You are able to Oral Conference. It will be larger and better than ever!" said Ellen Gerber, professional home of the NYCDS.

The Project on Government Oversight

The Project on Government Oversight

The FDA has an incident reporting database called MAUDE. While this database is interesting, it has no search parameters for electrical injury and death resulting from causes related to product safety. Additionally, this database is a voluntary reporting database for incidents, relying on a variety of different sources. Many of these sources are people who have no training in electrical safety, and are not even minimally qualified to judge the root cause of the incident, much less to determine if an incident was the result of leakage current. In the end, this database is not a reliable source for any scientific analysis of electrical injury or death from equipment.

The FDA also ignores the issue of electrical safety certification to U. S. standards. Many do not understand that because a device functions correctly that does not mean it is electrically safe. Additionally, The Project on Government Oversight reports that decisions by senior FDA officials in 2006 eliminated critical measures that keep manufacturers of medical devices compliant with high quality standards.8 Many other problems with the FDA make it a highly questionable source for research on the subject.

In a recent regulatory bulletin provided by Bureau Veritas, it was revealed that under the provisions of legislation introduced earlier this year in the U.S. House of Representatives, manufacturers may soon face liability for medical devices that harm consumers, even if those devices received pre-market approval from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA). The proposed H.R. 1346: Medical Device Safety Act of 2009 would amend the Federal Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act to provide legal recourse to patients who are injured by a medical device that malfunctions. 9

Why would the U.S. Congress be considering a bill that would allow lawsuits against FDA-approved products? Most likely because FDA-approved products have injured and killed, and the Supreme Court decision of 2008 was a grave mistake. As many of us in product safety are well aware, the FDA 510(k) Premarket approval process is a flawed and highly questionable regulatory requirement. As more product recalls are being reported by the media, a new administration in Washington, D.C., and a newly appointed FDA commissioner has said “there obviously have been some problems” at the Center for Devices and Radiological Health and has designated device reform as “a high priority” for the immediate future. Former FDA Commissioner David Kessler described the device center as “dysfunctional” and “in meltdown.” According to the new FDA chief, Margaret Hamburg, “Agency scientists have said some devices that received 510(k) approval should have been required to show more data on safety and efficacy”. 10

In addition to these problems, the FDA has historically ignored the requirements for electrical safety and federal workplace law. Obviously the FDA in its current state is an unreliable source for any research or meaningful data.

Our biomedical/clinical engineering departments are a major force protecting our patients and healthcare staff. These specially trained and hardworking technicians and engineering professionals are working every day to insure the safety and proper operation of equipment for our procedures and operations. Their diligence and commitment to patient safety is generally unseen and under-appreciated, much like product safety certification experts.

Biomedical engineers and technicians perform preventive maintenance of portable equipment. These duties include repair and maintenance (cords, leads, equipment subject to abuse…), leakage current, grounding and other tests, depending on the equipment being used. They also ensure equipment is operating properly so that patients will not be put at risk from faulty equipment. Grounding is the weak link and doorway to leakage current injury. Regular tests are critical to ensuring these conditions do not put our healthcare workers and patients at risk. Frequency of tests required or recommended by product varies from three months to two years, depending on the type and use of the equipment. This is a well-known fact in the biomedical engineering field. These biomedical departments are on the front lines of electrical safety in healthcare facilities. Recently, these departments have been reporting the use of regular consumer computer equipment in patient areas as being non-certified, but their objections have been ignored by hospital administrators.

Scott Trombley is a certified biomedical equipment technician (CBET) who has been working in this field for over twenty-five years, previously with COHR MasterPlan, then with hospitals in Atlanta and now Central Florida. He is currently on the Agency for Healthcare Administration’s (AHCA) expert list and was a speaker at the 23rd AHCA seminar. Scott and his employer InterMed work closely with the biomedical advisory board of Santa Fe College. He is also a founding member of Tyler’s Hope, a non-profit organization in search of a cure for Dystonia Scott is currently vice president of InterMed Biomedical Services where he oversees operations, employee safety and writes policy procedures to comply with authorities having jurisdiction. These AHJs include The Joint Commission, Agency for Healthcare Administration, and city and county electrical inspectors. Scott has the answers for questions about leakage current and other testing in healthcare facilities.

Monday, January 28, 2013

Featherstone named dean of UCSF School of Dentistry

By DrBicuspid Staff

September 8, 2008 -- John Featherstone, M.Sc., Ph.D., has been named dean of the School of Dentistry at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF).

In an e-mail message to the campus community on September 5, UCSF Chancellor J. Michael Bishop, M.D., said that Dr. Featherstone, who has been serving as interim dean, would become the next dean pending approval by the UC Board of Regents.

"Dr. Featherstone has been on the UCSF faculty for 13 years, and his exemplary service demonstrates how well-suited he is to serve as the dean on an ongoing basis," Dr. Bishop wrote. "As interim dean, he has demonstrated excellent leadership and management skills, with accomplishments that include selecting and appointing a department chair, establishing the new position of associate dean for clinical affairs as well as restructuring the school administration accordingly, and improving the clinical infrastructure and the financial situation of the predoctoral dental clinics."

Ultrasonic surgery eases sinus lifts and tooth extractions

By Rosemary Frei, MSc, DrBicuspid.com contributing writer

September 8, 2008 -- The use of very high-frequency sound waves -- ultrasound -- isn't just for bats and dolphins anymore. It is the new standard for everything from industrial cleaning to abdominal imaging. And now it's entering the world of dental surgery.

Ultrasonic surgery, also known as piezosurgery, can be used for cutting or grinding bone in sinus lifts, ridge augmentation, bone grafting, bone-block harvesting, and extraction of impacted teeth and roots. The ultrasonic devices developed for dentistry operate at frequencies of 20-35 KHz. The high-frequency sound waves sail right through adjacent soft tissues without damaging them, thus avoiding many of the complications associated with traditional surgical tools such as chisels and burs.

For example, perforation of the Schneiderian membrane occurs about a third of the time when conventional rotary instruments are used to do sinus lifts. But with ultrasound instruments the complication is relatively rare, noted Stephen Wallace, D.D.S., a New York University professor and a periodontist in private practice in Waterbury, CT. He was also one of the first people in the U.S. to perform ultrasonic dental surgery.

"We did a human study and showed the perforation rate is cut by 75%, to just 7%," Dr. Wallace said (International Journal of Periodontics and Restorative Dentistry, September/October 2007, Vol. 27:5, pp. 413-419).

In that study, Dr. Wallace and other periodontists from New York University and Israel pooled the analyses of their consecutive sinus lifting cases using the Piezosurgery device manufactured by Mectron Medical Technology. They noted a total of 7 sinus perforations in 100 procedures -- 3 caused by an extremely thin membrane and the others by the presence of a septum. The perforations all occurred during the hand elevation that followed use of the ultrasonic device, Dr. Wallace noted.

Which ultrasonic system should you buy?

Five ultrasonic surgical systems are now commercially available in the U.S. for cutting or grinding bone in dental applications.

Mectron Medical Technology was one of the first companies to offer this technology to the dental market with its Piezosurgery device. The Piezotome made by Satelec and marketed by Acteon is also available in the U.S., as is the Ultrasonic Bone Surgery device made by Resista and sold by Ace.

Also available are Piezon Master Surgery by Electro Medical Systems (EMS) and VarioSurg made by NSK and sold by Brasseler. Other units currently awaiting 510(k) marketing clearance from the FDA are BioSaf's Easy Surgery and Esacrome's SurgySonic.

The price of these systems ranges from $8,000 to $17,000.

If you are interested in reading what users of these products think about these products and why, check out this forum.

Another study found that using an ultrasonic device to perform bilateral sagittal split osteotomies of the mandible was more time-consuming compared to conventional techniques involving saws, chisels, and burs, but the osteotomies had a higher level of precision. In addition, the ultrasonic procedure offered the advantage of a blood-free surgical field (International Journal of Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery, September 2005, Vol. 34:6, pp. 590-593).

But not all the research has been positive. A recent report from Italy showing a 30.8% membrane-perforation rate in sinus-elevation procedures performed with the Piezosurgery device, versus a 23% perforation rate with conventional instruments (Clinical Oral Implants Research, May 2008, Vol. 19:5, pp. 511-515).

The investigators performed a prelift osteotomy for sinus access in 13 patients using the Piezosurgery system on one side of the maxilla in each patient and rotary diamond burs on the other side. Each side was completed in approximately the same amount of time, but 4 (30.8%) perforations occurred with the Piezosurgery device and 3 (23%) with the conventional instruments.

"It's the only negative report on the Piezosurgery device I've seen in the last 20 years," Dr. Wallace said. "In the program in which I teach residents from around the world how to use these instruments, they're uniformly successful using the Piezosurgery device, even though they're novices. So why there were these complications in the Italian paper, I can't explain."

Dr. Wallace learned how to use the Piezosurgery device about six years ago, at the elbow of one of its inventors, Tomaso Vercellotti, M.D., D.D.S., and he has been training other dentists how to use the technology ever since. He now teaches a two-year fellowship in implant dentistry at New York University that includes instruction in ultrasonic surgery. He also taught a course on ultrasonic surgery in September at the American Academy of Periodontology's annual meeting.

"None of the ultrasonic surgery companies were highlighted at the course at the AAP, but all of them were represented there," he said. "It was like a 'cage match' in wrestling, where people were able to try the five different machines on the same piece of bone. It was an opportunity people never have in their own clinical practices."

Jeff Thomas, D.D.S., a periodontist in private practice in Newbern, NC, is also a proponent of ultrasonic surgery. He just started his fourth year of teaching courses on ultrasonic surgery, and also performs hundreds of procedures with this technology every year in his own practice.

"I can't say I use it every day, but sometimes I use it three or four times in one day; it just depends on the type of surgery I'm doing," he told DrBicuspid.com. "It's not something you have to have. But it's something I couldn't do without. I can do more procedures less traumatically and more predictably than before ultrasonic surgery was invented."

Zenith donates fluoride varnish to kids' foundation

By DrBicuspid Staff

September 8, 2008 -- Zenith Dental recently donated more than 56,000 units of ClearShield 5% Sodium Fluoride Varnish to the National Children's Oral Health Foundation (NCOHF), the company announced.

The NCOHF is an international organization whose mission is to eliminate pediatric oral disease for millions of economically disadvantaged children. The NCOHF will donate the fluoride varnish to several nonprofit pediatric oral health facilities.

According to the NCOHF, because of Zenith's ongoing support and donations to the organization, the foundation is honoring Zenith with a grant in the company's name that will be awarded to an as-yet-unnamed children's oral health facility.