Maurice Wohl prize

The Maurice Wohl General Dental Practice Annual Prize was awarded to Dr Sarah Kasasa, final year student attending the Centre and fulfilling to the highest standards the various general dental practice disciplines of the Centre.

From L to R - Mr David Ian Weir — Director of the Maurice Wohl General Dental Practice Centre, Kings Dental Institute, Denmark Hill, Dr Sarah Kasasa PhD — winner of the GDP Centre's Annual Prize, Mr George Ashby — Claudius Ash representative to the King's Dental Institute.

University of Wales

Professor Graham Embery, Head of Basic Dental Science at the University of Wales College of Medicine, Cardiff, has been elected as Vice-President of the International Association of Dental Research.

Sandwell dental practice attain IIP status

Above: A Sandwell dental practice in West Bromwich has become the first in the borough to be recognised as an Investor in People. It is only the third dental practice in the West Midlands region to attain IIp status.

Expert witnesses

A draft Code of Guidance for expert witnesses in the dentistry profession, following the revolutionary Woolf reforms, has been unveiled.

Under the new Civil Procedure Rules, the courts are now regulating the process by which experts provide their reports. Rule 35 has major implications for the way in which expert evidence is presented. The proposed guidelines, which are intended to be supplementary to Rule 35, will have wide-reaching consequences for expert witnesses.

The draft Code of Guidance includes:

  • Clarification of the dual roles of the expert - one, advising the client, the other, reporting impartially to the court;

  • The need for those intending to appoint experts to consider at the outset whether the appointment is appropriate;

  • Terms of appointment;

  • Points to be covered in instructions;

  • A bar on independent experts accepting conditional fees;

  • A requirement for experts presenting expert testimony to address their report to the court;

  • A statement of essential information to be included in expert reports (eg qualifications instructions, documents and evidence relied on);

  • Arrangements for meetings and discussions between experts;

  • Arrangements for attendance at court; and

  • The expert's overriding duty to assist the court.

Murder Victim

Detectives investigating a murder that happened up to 25 years ago are appealing to dentists acrosst eh country to help identify the victim.

A post mortem examination confirmed that the victim found in Holloway, London on 2/6/99, was an adult female and that she had died a number of years ago.

Colin Bamford, dental surgeon and forensic odontologist beleives that the surgeon who worked on the victim's teeth would remember doing so. The police would like to appeal to any dentists or nurses who can recall working on a patient who recieved the following treatment, possible between 1975 – 1985;

Two 5 Unit bonded porcelain bridges spanning and She has a lower chrome cobalt denture replacing.

There is no restorative work in the remaining lower teeth and minor restorations in the upper molars, suggesting the bridges were necessitated through congenital absence or trauma

Anyone who has carries out dental work as described above is asked to call the Incident Room at Hendon on 0181 358 1766 or, call Mr Bamford's surgery direct to discuss further on 0181 572 9705.