A little while ago in the blog I introduced Dr Kath who started working with us at the practice in April (ish) 2016; Dr Kath (PhD) is our Research Coordinator and has been working for the past 18 months or so on setting up both the structure of research and trying to embed a culture of research into the practice.
At the outset we agreed that this was a long-term prospect, a five-year plan to get us to a level where we could comfortably and consistently produce high quality research that would benefit not only the profession, but more importantly our wider group of patients. Well it is time to report (to anyone who might be interested) how far we have got in a short amount of time.
At the start of 2017 we had our implant database at the practice ethically approved by the Derby Ethics Committee.
This is hugely significant. It means that any of the routine treatment outcomes that we measure at the practice as stated in our application to Derby can now be submitted for publication without further ethical approval. It has already allowed the submission of our first paper to Clinical Oral Implant Research that is now being reviewed for publication. The fact that we have become a research initiator has gained a lot of interest from various academic institutions and allowed us now to establish formal research collaborations with The University of Glasgow (ENT) and The University of Manchester. We are also in early discussions with The University of Geneva to do Digital Implant Research in collaboration with them too.
Following on from this we have been asked by Straumann to be involved in their non-interventional study in the new Implant for Immediate Full Arch loading. We are also, in the relatively near future, soon to produce for publication our 10-year Sinus grafting data and 4 years of data on aesthetic implant placements with simultaneous GBR. Much of this ties in with what we provide in the education in The Campbell Academy as far as aesthetic implant placement, sinus grafting and immediate full arch reconstruction is concerned. Even more exciting than this is that Kath, in conjunction with Nish (PhD) have now been able to begin the process of submitting a research application to the ITI for further funding into digital implant dentistry.
Our little ‘research department’ costs us money at the practice, it is not a ‘profit centre’ (what ever one of those is) but it is marvellous, a privilege and amazing. It’s something we can talk to both patients and colleagues about, it’s ‘the real deal’. We are not doing it because it is a shiny bright object, we are doing it because it is the right thing to do, it’s interesting and it’s fun. If you want to know how we did it or if you’re interested in doing it yourself let us know and we can help you jump through some of the hoops and barriers that we had to. Together running these types of things we can actually make dentistry look better to the public, feel better to us and be better for patients.
Blog Post Number - 1353
Leave a comment