Sir, it is notable that that the Quintessence book Ozone — The revolution in dentistry also received an extremely positive review in October 2005 in the Deutsche Zahnaerztliche Zeitschrift. Professor M. Baumann appreciated the excellent illustration in the chapters 4.6 and 4.7 and recommended this book as a true mine of information. Hundreds of dentists have personally told me how HealOzone has improved the care they can provide for their patients and how they now cannot imagine practising without it. My personal experience with the HealOzone over the past three years has been excellent. Published research led by Professor Beer in Germany has also proven the benefits of HealOzone use.1,2

Dentists in practice often do scaling and polishing for aesthetic reasons to remove tooth staining etc. However let us have a closer look at this review out of the Cochrane Library:3

Routine scale and polish for periodontal health in adults

The research evidence is of insufficient quality to reach any conclusions regarding the beneficial and adverse effects of routine scaling and polishing for periodontal health and regarding the effects of providing this intervention at different time intervals. High quality clinical trials are required to address the basic questions posed in this review.

There are psychological consequences associated with leaving people with stained teeth. Unfortunately, Cochrane only considered the periodontal health question. When they assessed the HealOzone4 it is so unfortunate that they did not seem to understand that the vast majority of dentists either immediately seal the caries lesion after applying Ozone or they seal the lesion after one month. Why did Cochrane therefore eliminate all the studies of one-month duration proving the reversal of caries after the use of Ozone? Why did Cochrane and NICE choose a biased approach looking for a minimum of six months' follow up when this is inappropriate for most Ozone uses? Performing the Cochrane and NICE reviews for this recently introduced product, undergoing a great amount of research, was premature. But I do see a big opportunity for the future reviews to present a balanced view, when looking carefully to antecedents in the Cochrane practice regarding 'Enamel matrix derivative (Emdogain®) for periodontal tissue regeneration in intrabony defects', where after a relatively short interval first conclusions were revisited.5,6

It is interesting to note how many academics were advising, decades ago, against the use of acid etching enamel, against the use of high speed hand pieces, etc while dentists in practice fortunately proceeded to help their patients with these new concepts. Fortunately, many thousands of dentists have already helped millions of patients using Ozone.