Primary Dental Journal

To investigate, by questionnaire, the direct restorative materials used by a sample of practitioners from the Unite d Kingdom.

A postal questionnaire was distributed to a group of self-selected practitioners, who volunteered to participate in the study. In all 110 practitioners participated in the study.

The most used material for the restoration of occlusal (Class I) and approximal (Class II) lesions was amalgam with 61% and 73% of practitioners indicating that they used amalgam in this situation. Adhesive tooth-coloured materials, specifically composites and compomers, were preferred by the majority of practitioners for anterior approximal (Class III) and incisal (Class IV) restorations with compomer preferred for Class V restorations including non-carious cervical lesions and for the restoration of primary teeth.

It is concluded that the general practitioners surveyed in this study tend to use amalgam for the restoration of Class I and II lesions as opposed to resin composite. The majority of practitioners in this study used compomers, a relatively new group of restorative materials, with little evidence of traditional glass-ionomer cements being used routinely.

• To find out if local nursing/residential home managers are experiencing any problems in obtaining domiciliary dental care for residents.

• To assess the availability of local GDS and CDS dentists for domiciliary dental care for the elderly and the range of treatments offered.

Self-completing postal questionnaires distributed to 148 dentists and 80 nursing/residential home nurse managers.

71% of responding dentists undertook domiciliary visits but 43% of these were not accepting any new NHS domiciliary patients. Only 21% of those willing to visit would undertake any conservative treatment. Seventy per cent of nurse managers reported few problems in finding a NHS dentist, but the remaining 30% had found it difficult or impossible. Eighty-five per cent would find written guidelines helpful.

The number of elderly patients keeping natural teeth is steadily increasing. The rate of dental caries in institutionalised patients is significantly higher than those living in their own homes. The number of dentists in the area of this study who are accepting new domiciliary patients is rapidly decreasing and only one in five will provide conservative treatment. This is a deteriorating situation, which merits further investigation on a national scale and subsequent planning to address it.

With the problems of access to NHS primary dental care services in the last few years attention has focused on manpower considerations for dentistry.

This paper presents the results of a simple survey of general dental practitioners in South Staffordshire.

The response rate was 88%. Most dentists (76%) reported working over 30 hours a week. A small number reported working more than 50 hours a week. Woman dentists were more likely to report working fewer than 31 hours a week. Younger male dentists tended to work longer hours than older male dentists, whereas younger women dentists tended to work fewer hours than older women. The reported retirement plans suggested that around 16% of dentists in their 40s and 50s were planning to retire before 60.

The findings add weight to the view that woman dentists tend to work fewer hours but studies of cohorts are required to examine the impact of premature retirement and the reasons behind this apparent gender difference.