Dentistry has come far since the old days of quick, twice-yearly check-ups; with full body health checks, sleep apnea treatment and laser therapy all offered at some state-of-the-art practices.
SoGlos caught up with Dr Peter Workman, practice owner and clinical director of Affinity Dental Care & Implant Centre in Gloucester, to find out about its innovative treatments, holistic approach and what patients can expect at the surgery.
Peter, can you give us a bit of information about your background and what interested you in dentistry?
I originally come from Greenock in Scotland and, initially, it was expected that I would do electrical and electronic engineering at university; but I stayed on at school for another year — because the exams were different in Scotland — and while there, decided to do something more clinically-focused, dealing with people.
I looked into veterinary medicine, medicine and dentistry, and opted for dentistry — and I still love it to this day. I had always envisaged having my own practice and it gives me such a sense of pride — every day I'm happy to support my patients.
Do you have any special dentistry interests?
Special interest wise, I try and make sure that dentistry work is minimalist, from the point of view of the preservation of tissues in the mouth — hard and soft — because it's important to consider what may happen in the future, health wise.
I also have a particular interest in dental laser therapy along with implant dentistry, which is an ever-expanding part of my clinical repertoire.
Can you explain a bit more about lasers and what they do?
A lot of the procedures we do as dentists are quite invasive and we ask a lot of the body to try and repair from that. So, there are various ways that you can help to enhance and instigate the healing mechanics of the body.
With laser therapy, the way that it treats the tissues also enhances the healing mechanics of the body because of the energy that's put into your system. Lasers help to promote the cascade of all the healing mechanics that go on in the body and allow a much more minimalist approach to the outcome.
We also take blood from patients before certain procedures to 'spin down' their blood and essentially concentrate all their healing cells within the blood. And then we introduce it back into the wound sites — that can take out the first two or three days of the inflammatory process, which is the bit that tends to release more pain mechanics.
These procedures focus more on the gums, but I can also release some of the snagging tissues that sometimes bind your lips towards the gum, as well as tongue tie release to help with people's tongue mobility and improve their eating, skeletal development and speech quality.
How has the dental industry changed since you first qualified?
Dentistry, as far as having changed since I first qualified, is just unbelievable. It used to be a case of a surgery would just have its door open and a telephone line. Patients would be pouring in and the appointment books would be paper based — it was very different in the days when I was providing NHS treatment.
Sadly, there has been a complete demise of NHS dentistry, which has nothing to do with the dentists; it's down to unrealistic funding expectations and a lack of understanding about real patient needs and the delivery of how that can happen.
How is Affinity Dental different to other practices in the area and why should patients come you?
We get a lot of patients who comment when they come in to see us about the atmosphere at the surgery and that there's a lot of smiley faces. We're very welcoming and it's a comfortable environment to be in. Our patients will say that they feel everything's been explained to them, they've had a good amount of time with us and that, if something needed to be followed up, they know they will receive the information that allows them to make their own choices about their care.
And we do care about our patients — from the moment we answer the phone, to when they walk through the door and their whole journey through the practice.
Is there anything that SoGlos readers might be surprised to learn about dentistry?
Dentistry is a much more complex discipline than many people realise. We have a crossover with the realms of medicine and dentistry; the links between general health issues and health care; and the vast links with gum disease to many, many health conditions. Dentistry combines all those facets.
If you break down the word 'dentist' into its components, in terms of the letters, D is essentially the doctor part of our training where we have a fair smattering of knowledge about general medical scenarios. We have pointed many patients towards their doctor for a whole variety of things and we are there to spot dental disease such as tooth decay but all the soft tissues around it, too.
And then EN is for the engineer side of things, in that everything we do is precise engineering that allows us to perform some quite miraculous, little difficult tasks inside a bodily environment on people who really don't want to be there but know that you're trying to deliver the outcome that will get them back functioning or out of pain.
Leaving TIST which is really the artist part of dentistry, whereby you're trying to recreate what has been damaged, missing or doesn't look right. The artistic element of a dentist's skills combined with the technicians who work with them allows them to give a patient the function to smile, so that they can feel confident — because having a smile makes a huge difference.
It's one of the very first things that people see when they look at you — they notice your eyes and they notice your smile. This combined with how everything functions in terms of how the jaw joints move and the vast majority of diseases that can bring on tension headaches, poor sleep quality and snoring — we assess so many things.
And, finally, if you could offer one piece of dental advice to us, what would it be?
Only brush the teeth that you want to keep!
