ADA show coverage begins; NY man wins $9.8M over tooth extraction

Dear DrBicuspid Member,

The ADA Annual Session kicks off this week, and DrBicuspid is already providing coverage of key issues and new products to be showcased at the meeting in our ADA 2012 ShowCast.

The annual session doesn't officially open until tomorrow, but the ADA got things started Monday with a three-day Give Kids A Smile program, where some 2,000 children at three San Francisco locations will receive free oral screenings in a mobile van provided by Colgate.

The ADA House of Delegates (HOD) also convenes this week, with a number of key issues to be debated and voted on. For example, amid the long list of resolutions scheduled to be considered by the HOD lies one that some public health dentists say poses a threat to their specialty: Resolution 17.

And Dr. Mary Hayes is hoping the HOD will rethink the ADA's proposal to "deconstruct" and all but shut down its library, which has served as a key resource for ADA members for more than 80 years and is considered the leading repository of the history, legacy, and knowledge of dentistry.

Legal wranglings

In other dental news, two lawsuits were in the spotlight this week:

• A former student at the New York University College of Dentistry who says she was dismissed from the school and denied her degrees after she fell short of completing a required quota in clinical work will have her degrees honored, following an appellate court decision.
• A New York jury awarded $9.8 million in a malpractice lawsuit filed by a man who was hospitalized following a third-molar extraction. The patient's dentist and oral surgeon were found liable for his injuries and for failing to obtain informed consent.

Meanwhile, a new report from the Platform for Better Oral Health in Europe takes the European Union (EU) to task for not taking better care of its citizens' oral health and calls on EU nations to invest more in preventive dental care.

Finally, a growing body of evidence suggests that radiographs used in dentistry and medicine can induce cytotoxic effects at the cellular level, including a new study in Quintessence International that explores the genotoxic effects of panoramic radiographs on oral mucosa.