BOC Brighton: Session Chairman Ed Payne with James and Vaughan after their lecture.

Session Chairman thanking Chris Bridle for his lecture on Health and Safety (photo courtesy of Andrew Wallis)

Dave Hoban with some of his family outside the Brighton Conference Centre before being presented with the "2008 BOC Distinguished Technician Award"

There was a good attendance at this years technicians programme considering there had been no programme at the BOC for the last few years. The reintroduction of the technicians programme is very welcome as technicians are now registered with the GDC and have to accumulate CPD like other members of the dental team. It is hoped that the Technicians programme can be extended to a full day next year for the BOC in Edinburgh. Negations are currently taking place to extend the technicians session to a full day which would make it worthwhile to travel to the conference and increase the number of CPD points awarded for a full days session.

An excellent variety of lectures were presented in Brighton considering the short time span that Chairman Chris had to arrange the lecture programme for our morning session. Members of the Orthodontic Technicians Association and colleagues presented an excellent range of topics and the session chairman was Ed Payne.

Paul Mallett presented "An Update on Orthognathic Surgery Planning" using a modified Lockwood Technique. Paul described modifications he has developed for the Lockwood system and how they worked for him. He even included a short video on the surgical procedure which gave the audience an insight into how the surgical splints were used during the procedure of orthognathic surgery.

Hand-arm vibration can cause a variety of symptoms known collectively as 'Hand Arm Vibration Syndrome' the most well known of which is vascular condition, Vibration White Finger. There are many millions of workers at risk of developing this problem across Europe and, in order to manage the risk in a coherent manner, the European Physical Agents (Vibration) Directive was published in 2002. Gavin Carmichael explained to the audience how this condition could affect Dental Technicians. He described some of the equipment in the dental laboratory which could cause problems and how the usage of these pieces of equipment should be curtailed.

The next lecture was jointly presented by Mr James Grant and Vaughan Jones on the aesthetic Retainer, Composite Veneers and Resin Retained Bridges. Due to the number of cleft being treated in their unit it became important for them to produce a retainer for these difficult cases. They went on to describe the attachment of teeth and the types of retainers they used.

The programme concluded with a lecture on laboratory Safety Legislation by the Chairman of the OTA Chris Bridle. Chris's lecture only covered the fundamentals of health and safety legislation that is required to run an Orthodontic clinic and Laboratory. You can obtain in depth information from your local health and safety executive office, publications and the HSE web site at: http://www.open.gov.uk/hse/hsehome.htm

The next OTA event will be the annual conference in Luton from the 20th to 22nd March 2009 where you can accumulate your next tranche of CPD points. Book Now - booking forms available on the OTA website and in the Newsletter or from Kerry Lancaster address at the back of the Newsletter.