The University has been awarded £83K in joint project with University of Glasgow to evaluate the success of counselling dental patients to stop smoking.
For the first time in Scotland, funds have been awarded to evaluate the success of dental team members in giving their patients advice and counselling on stopping smoking in order to improve their oral health and in particular to help prevent patients from developing oral cancer.
It is known that rates of oral cancer have doubled in the last 15 years, and smoking is the main risk factor. Professor Graham Ogden at the University of Dundee's Dental School along with Viv Binnie of the University of Glasgow Dental School will use the funding to train dental team members in smoking cessation and to fund dental hygienists to give smoking cessation advice in Glasgow and Dundee Dental Hospitals. This will help their patients quit smoking and reduce their chances of developing mouth cancer.
Professor Graham Ogden, explains, "Dentists and dental hygienists are not only concerned with teeth. The health of people's mouths is a great indicator of their general health and is vital to their wellbeing. Smoking is commonly associated with lung cancer but can also cause numerous other cancers one of which is oral cancer - not as well known or understood."
Viv Binnie, Lecturer in Oral Health Promotion at Glasgow Dental School, added, "At the end of the project, we hope to understand how effective these two different types of smoking cessation advice are. While this particular project is taking place in the dental hospitals, our work will have implications for general dental practice."
Within the dental schools, patients with potentially malignant (or tobacco induced) oral lesions will be targeted. These are patients who are most at risk of developing oral cancer and so would most benefit from support to quit smoking. Currently, this group gets little advice or help to quit smoking as there is no time or money set aside by the NHS for dentists to be in a position to do so.
Consenting patients will be assessed by the team for their nicotine dependence, readiness and motivation to quit. They will be asked to provide a sample of saliva, which will be assessed for cotinine (a metabolite of nicotine) and a carbon monoxide measurement will also be taken.
Patients then will be randomly allocated to one of two groups for smoking cessation. The first is based on a method called the "5As", together with Nicotine Replacement Therapy (NRT) if they so wish, or Behaviour Change Counselling and NRT. After the study is completed, the dentists hope to discover what motivates people with mouth lesions to stop smoking. This project is one of ten which have been funded by the new Partnership Action on Tobacco and Health (PATH) Project, which has put £900,000 towards these projects. PATH aims to increase the number of people that successfully stop smoking in Scotland. Working with key partners, PATH develop and put into practice key findings in areas of training, information gathering, evaluation, prevention and cessation. PATH is managed by national anti-tobacco organisation ASH Scotland.
Mark O'Donnell, PATH Project Manager, welcomed the Project. He said, "We are delighted to be able to fund such important work through PATH. With oral cancer rates having doubled since the late 1980s, we urgently need to look at preventing the disease in Scotland. Reducing tobacco use is central to this aim. This project is a perfect opportunity to discover what support dentists need to enable them to provide patients with help to quit smoking."
University of Dundee contacts:
Professor Graham Ogden - 01382 660111 ext 35989
Jenny Marra (Press Office) - 01382 344021
University of Glasgow contacts:
Viv Binnie (Dental School) - 0141-211-9802
Judith Hodgson (Press Office) - 0141 330 3535
PATH
Tanith Muller - 0131 225 4725
By Jenny Marra, Head of Press 01382 344910 j.m.marra@dundee.ac.uk