Week in Review: Opioid overdoses | Updating CAMBRA | Managing your inventory

Dear DrBicuspid Member,

There may be no better illustration of how pervasive the opioid epidemic is in the U.S. than the new data released by the National Safety Council reporting that Americans are now more likely to die from an accidental opioid overdose than from a motor vehicle crash.

Dentists and oral surgeons have an opportunity to take the lead in pledging not to prescribe opioids. The challenge is finding a way to talk with your patient or a patient's parent that emphasizes the benefits of using other pain management options.

In other clinical news, caries management by risk assessment (CAMBRA) began a little more than two decades ago when John Featherstone, PhD, set out to create a one-page tool to prevent caries. While CAMBRA has come to redefine how the newest generation of dentists think about dental decay, read about how the assessment is in the process of being updated.

One underlooked aspect of managing your practice is being in control of your inventory. Having too much inventory can lead to high overhead and low revenue, while a shortage can negatively affect your daily business tasks, Dr. Roger P. Levin notes in his latest Practice Success tip.

Finally this week on DrBicuspid.com, the use of CAD/CAM composite resin crowns for premolars is a growing practice, but there are concerns that these crowns lose retention or fracture over time. Researchers evaluated more than 500 crowns to find out if these concerns are valid.