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Articles of Interest
Here are a selection of articles written by Dr M K
Vasant, which were published in professional dental journals.
A
MINSTREL'S DREAM COMES TRUE
Dentistry January 2004 |
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Manny Vasant, MBE, reports
on the SAAD Concious Sedation in Dentistry
course at St Bartholomew's Hospital on 5 and
6 June, 2003
The story of St Bartholomew’s
Hospital records the dream of a minstrel at
the court of King Henry I in 1123 to relieve
pain and misery in the city of London. Rahere’s
dream was fulfilled when the King decided
to support him in building this hospital which
came into being in that era and stands on
the same site 800 years later fulfilling the
same promise. |
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The Society for the Advancement of Anaesthesia in Dentistry,
a dental charity, came into being in the late 1950s and
continues the same theme to relieve pain and anxiety for
patients in need of dental treatment. Their motto is “dolore
vincto timore victo” Abolish Pain to Conquer Fear.
It is befitting that several centuries later, the course
to train dentists in Conscious Sedation techniques is
run in this very premises. At the invitation of David
Craig, the Course Director of SAAD, I went along to see
what the course was about. Admittedly, though I have been
a SAAD member for several years, IV sedation has never
been my forte.
No time wasting
| I was impressed with
what I saw. The training was for two days and unlike
many courses which cater for masses (there were
over 80 dentists and 60 dental nurses), there was
no time wasting. Various speakers gave out a vast
amount of information in a very digestible manner.
Virtually all the speakers are eminent members of
the SAAD, some of who have been members of the Expert
Working Group on Standards in Conscious Sedation
for Dentistry. The course started punctually and
ran to time and the breaks were timely and well
controlled. |
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| Most
participants were happy with the antecubital
fossae |
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The General Dental Council and the profession are just
waking up to the concept of team training. SAAD has been
ahead of the times- they have been running courses such
as this one, for dentists and nurses, for decades.
For the whole sedation team
| The standards stipulated
in formal documents state that “Education
and training in conscious sedation needs to ensure
that ALL members of the dental team providing treatment
under Conscious Sedation have received theoretical,
practical and clinical training before undertaking
clinical practice”. In keeping with this premise,
once the aims and objectives of the course had been
explained, the early speakers took us through the
basic sciences. Local analgesia must underpin good
Conscious Sedation practice and this was covered
in some detail. The practical part included sniffing
the laughing gas to get a feel for Relative Analgesia.
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| Others
went for the jugular |
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As one would expect some participants were too reluctant
to move on to the next part- venepuncture on each other!
The technique used now (cannula) is much safer than when
I first attended the SAAD course back in 1974 when we
were taught to leave needles in the vein and strap the
elbow to a flat board to prevent patient’s from
flexing their arm! Readers of this journal may have also
read the August 2003 issue about The Vein Entry Indicator
Device (VEID). This device confirms one’s position
in the vein by a system of audible bleeps . This additional
reassurance is very welcome for a novice like me!
Monitoring device
| We were then taught
to use patient monitoring devices such as pulse
oximeter. Clinicians showed video recordings of
different types of cases being treated in their
practices. It was wonderful to see and learn new
communications skills- who said you don’t
need any when you sedate your patients! There was
also a lively and humorous session on medico-legal
problems. Finally, there was final obligatory multiple-choice
questions-though we were spared the embarrassment
of submitting the answers! Thankfully, it was self-assessment.
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| Nurses
MCQs: bubbly for the winner! The SAAD course
was enjoyed by the whole dental team |
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I know from experience that raison d’être
for some of the participants on other courses is to collect
CPD points. I suspect the participants here were here
to learn, and they did learn.
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