Asbestos dressing

Our plain-English summary of Asbestos dressing, by A. Cook (British Dental Journal, 2008).

The study

• Author: A. Cook
• Journal: British Dental Journal
• Published: 2008;204(5):224
• Type of article: Letter
• Cited by: 4 articles, as counted by NIH iCite
• Read it: PubMed · Publisher

Summary of the article

This letter to the editor responded to a published obituary of Richard James Bourne (BDJ 2007; 203: 715), who died of mesothelioma. The obituary had suggested that his only exposure to asbestos had been in the 'tunnels' of University College Hospital (UCH). The author said he had no knowledge of the periodontal treatment methods used at UCH. He then described his own experience as a student in 1967/8 at the Royal Dental Hospital of London. There, an 'asbestos resin dressing' was applied to patients' freshly cut gums. The powder mixture came from the clinic stores. It was mixed with eugenol on a glass slab next to the patient in the dental chair, rolled into a sausage shape and applied with bare fingers. The author recalled a fellow student remarking at the time that asbestos causes cancer. He cited two textbooks used by his teachers that gave the recipe for this gingivectomy dressing: Wade's Basic periodontology (2nd edition, 1965, p 235) and Manson's Periodontics for the dental practitioner (1966, p 77). The letter reported no measurements or data and drew no further conclusion.

PubMed has no abstract for this study, and the article doesn't print one. We wrote this summary from the full article with the help of AI. It is not the authors' wording.

In plain English

This was a short letter to the editor of the British Dental Journal, not a research study. It gave a personal recollection rather than study results or measurements. The author wrote in response to a journal obituary of Richard James Bourne, who died of mesothelioma. The obituary suggested that his only asbestos exposure had been in the 'tunnels' of University College Hospital (UCH). The author said they had no knowledge of the gum treatment methods used at UCH. But they recalled that in 1967/8, at the Royal Dental Hospital of London, they and others applied an 'asbestos resin dressing' to patients' freshly cut gums. The powder came from the clinic stores and was mixed with eugenol on a glass slab next to the patient in the dental chair. It was then rolled into a sausage shape and applied with bare fingers. The author remembered a fellow student remarking at the time that asbestos causes cancer. The author cited two periodontics textbooks, from 1965 and 1966, that give the recipe for this gingivectomy dressing. The letter did not name a type of asbestos or give any measure of exposure.

We wrote this plain-English summary from the full article with the help of AI, and a second AI model checked each sentence against the article. It is not the authors' wording; the abstract and the article are their own account.

What the study did and found

• Design: letter to the editor (firsthand recollection; no study results or exposure measurements)
• Who was studied: No study population. The author recalled dental work on patients at the Royal Dental Hospital of London in 1967/8, and referred to an obituary of Richard James Bourne, who died of mesothelioma.
• Exposure: An 'asbestos resin dressing' applied to patients' freshly cut gums after gingivectomy. The fiber type was not stated.
• Main results:
  • The obituary had suggested that Bourne's only asbestos exposure was in University College Hospital's 'tunnels'. The author stated having no knowledge of the periodontal treatment methods used at UCH.
  • The dressing powder was taken from the clinic stores and mixed with eugenol on a glass slab next to the patient in the dental chair.
  • The mixture was rolled into a sausage shape and applied with bare fingers.
  • The author recalled a fellow student commenting at the time that asbestos causes cancer.
  • The recipe for this gingivectomy dressing appeared in two of the author's teachers' textbooks (Wade 1965; Manson 1966).

Topics

The National Library of Medicine indexes this study under subjects our site covers: Mesothelioma.

Medical terms in this study, explained in our Lexicon: Mesothelioma.

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• The Beta-Carotene and Retinol Efficacy Trial: incidence of lung cancer and cardiovascular disease mortality during 6-year follow-up after stopping beta-carotene and retinol supplements — G.E. Goodman, M.D. Thornquist, et al. (2004)
• Human mesothelial cells are unusually susceptible to simian virus 40-mediated transformation and asbestos cocarcinogenicity — M. Bocchetta, I. Di Resta, et al. (2000)
• Absence of carcinogenic response to multiwall carbon nanotubes in a 2-year bioassay in the peritoneal cavity of the rat — J. Muller, M. Delos, et al. (2009)

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