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Advocacy Update: Standards Committee on Dental Products

The ACP is a voting member of the American Dental Association’s Standards Committee on Dental Products. Dr. Lawrence Gettleman represents the ACP at meetings of the committee, which are held annually.

Dr. Gettleman also chairs Working Group 2.16 on Extraoral Maxillofacial Prosthetic Materials. This working group is writing a proposed standard for these materials, as no standard exists yet at the U.S. or international level. A list of potential tests for materials properties is now in development. Dr. Gettleman welcomes the interest of other ACP members in standards development, and is happy to add others to the working group.

For more about the meeting, please read Dr. Gettleman’s 2019 report which is detailed below. 

As a member of the ACP, you belong to the organization that represents the specialty of prosthodontics and ensures national recognition of the specialty.

Report on American College of Prosthodontists Participation in the American Dental Association’s Standards Committee on Dental Products Meeting
June 17th – 18th – 19th, 2019
Vancouver, B.C., Canada

These standards meetings are held yearly just before the American Association for Dental Research meeting in the same city. I have represented the ACP since 1998, jointly with the late Kenneth L. Rudd, and am appointed through 2021. I have been a voting member of the Standards Committee on Dental Products (SCDP) and its predecessor committees since 1968.

In addition to serving on many other committees associated with prosthodontic materials, I have chaired Working Group 2.16 on Extraoral Maxillofacial Prosthetic Materials since 2006. It is part of Subcommittee 2 on Prosthodontic Materials (Chair: Dr. Spiro Megremis, Vice Chair: Dr. Russell Giordano).

The working group is writing a proposed standard for these materials from scratch. No standard exists yet at the U.S. or international level. A list of potential tests for materials properties was circulated and I chaired a meeting on June 17th in Vancouver, B.C.

In attendance were Joel Anderson (FDA), Daniel Dunham (US Army), Linda Kronick (UConn), Spiro Megremis (ADA), Jeffrey Platt (Indiana Univ.), and Ken Ochiai (USC). Other interested parties in the working group include Alvin Wee (UNebraska), Sudarat Kiat-amnuay (Univ. of Texas-Houston), Steve Jefferies (Temple Univ.), J. Robert Kelly (UConn), Glenn Turner (UFlorida), Ben Wu (UCLA), and Kenneth Kent (UPenn).

In the writing process, I am in the process of selecting various tests for materials similar to those used in maxillofacial prostheses for discussion and then inclusion in an ISO and ADA standard (see attached). A round-robin testing schedule will then be carried out.

The report of an SCDP meeting from 2018 is also available.

Attendance at these meetings is rewarding for me to meet important producers, consumers, and regulators of dental products. It is a quick way to learn what will be happening in clinical dentistry in the next five to ten years. I consider the activities in voluntary standards to be the ADA “minding the store” for the rest of the profession, dating back to the end of World War I. Standards testing procedures were also the subject of my master’s degree thesis in the mid-1960s. In addition to my work in maxillofacial prosthetic materials, I also have expressed additional interest recently in the a) labeling and traceability of all dental products, b) proper nomenclature and vocabulary, c) developing a test for sharpness of dental instruments, d) athletic mouth protectors, e) resilient denture liners (I developed Novus® with NIH support in the 1980s) and f) infection control products and procedures.

I welcome the interest of other ACP members in standards development, and am happy to add others to Working Group 2.16 on Extraoral Maxillofacial Prosthetic Materials.

Lawrence Gettleman, DMD, MSD
Professor of Prosthodontics & Biomaterials, Emeritus
University of Louisville, School of Dentistry
501 S. Preston Street, Room LL 0102E
Louisville, Kentucky 40292 (shipping 40202) USA Eastern Time
Tel: (502) 852-1185; Fax: (502) 852-1317
gettleman@louisville.edu

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