FDA panel scrutinizes amalgam; did oral surgery cause man's stroke?

Dear DrBicuspid Member,

A meeting room in a Holiday Inn in Gaithersburg, MD, is the site of a highly charged public hearing this week on the safety of dental amalgam, being sponsored by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA).

While some attendees carried protest signs and testified before an expert advisory panel about how their health had been harmed by amalgam fillings, others -- such as Rod Mackert, DMD, PhD, a dental materials expert from the Medical College of Georgia -- sought to dispel arguments that dental amalgam is responsible for such conditions as multiple sclerosis, Alzheimer's disease, and autism.

Will the panel's findings put an end to the debate, once and for all? Click here to read more.

In other Restoratives Community news, the U.S. government has been named as a defendant in a malpractice lawsuit filed against a Pennsylvania oral surgeon after one of his patients suffered a debilitating stroke following multiple tooth extractions. Read more.

On the clinical front, researchers from Case Western Reserve University followed 428 orthodontic patients for two years after debonding and found that although compliance rates tended to decrease over time, most patients continued to wear their retainers at least one night per week. Read more in this latest Cosmetics Community feature.

Finally, don't miss out on your opportunity to vote in the semifinals round of the 2011 DrBicuspid Dental Excellence Awards. Voting ends at midnight tonight -- click here to cast your votes for dentistry's best and brightest now!