A clinical evaluation of a locking orthodontic facebow.

Standard orthodontic facebows may accidentally detach from the appliance buccal tubes at night; this could reduce the effectiveness of extra oral traction and occasionally cause an injury. To try and prevent facebow detachment at night a facebow with a locking mechanism was introduced. This study assessed the ability of 706 consecutively treated patients to learn to wear and use this facebow. The facebows were fitted in 9 different practices supervised by 12 orthodontists. Data from the patients and orthodontists were collected over a 2-year period and covered approximately 166,550 nights. All the orthodontists were able to fit and adjust the facebow; a total of 697 patients successfully used the facebow. Accidental detachment of the facebow at night was reported to be less than 1%. This indicates a significant improvement in the safety of the facebow and should help to improve compliance by increasing the number of hours of wear achieved by the patients.

Oral hygiene training programmes in long-stay hospitals.

It is gratifying that as a direct long term result of a survey conducted by the author in a geriatric hospital in Liverpool, a dental health programme for such patients is currently being implemented by members of the Community Dental Service staff. The results of the survey indicated that the treatment need for the elderly is mainly a restorative one, largely concerned with complete dentures. The survey also demonstrated, however, that half of all long-stay patients are incapable of maintaining a reasonable level of oral hygiene for themselves and were unaware of their own dental needs. It is important that there should be supervision of these patients to maintain oral hygiene standards and ensure early identification of oral pathology. It is these problems that the programmes which are now being implemented attempt to address. This is an account of the author's involvement in their development.