Our Media

Smile Media

This is the index to the Smile Solutions media archive: 116 recorded items published between September 1932 and September 2024.

How this archive works

Each page records one media item — what it was, where it appeared, and when. No third-party article, broadcast or image is reproduced. Those remain the property of their publishers.

What each page carries instead is substantive, evidence-based information on the subject the item concerned. The pages are written to be useful on their own, and they cross-reference each other.

Two rules are applied throughout:

No individual's clinical information is published, whatever was broadcast or printed. Health information does not stop being health information because someone discussed it publicly.

No testimonials about clinical care. Section 133 of the National Law prohibits them in the advertising of a regulated health service, and several items in this archive are exactly the material that prohibition covers.

And the recurring caveat: awards, premises, media coverage, review scores and equipment are not evidence of clinical quality, and under the National Law must not be presented as though they are. The verifiable facts about any practitioner are on the AHPRA public register at ahpra.gov.au — free, in a minute: registration status, division, any specialist registration, and any conditions in force.

By subject

Prevention and everyday care

• Fighting decay — what caries actually is, why frequency of sugar beats quantity, and what has evidence behind it
• Q&A with Kia Pajouhesh — the questions people most often ask, answered plainly
• The Matt & Jo Show — bad breath: where it comes from and what actually works
• More than healthy teeth — oral health and general health, with the evidence graded honestly
• Exploring the link between sleep quality and oral health — grinding, sleep apnoea, dry mouth and reflux
• Triple M's Hot Breakfast — smoking and vaping

Children

• Kids get the brush off — what to do at each age, and the habits that cause the damage
• Stop Brushing Battles — technique, tactics, and when resistance is not defiance
• Protecting your child from dental disease — media record, June 2012 — teething, mouth infections, abscess, trauma, and what needs seeing today
• Picking the right dentist for your child — who is qualified, and when a specialist is warranted
• Molar Power — the six-year molar, MIH, and cracked teeth
• Smile Solutions Tooth Fairy in the news — when teeth fall out, in what order, and what to do about the ones that don't
• Healthy Teeth & Early Orthodontic Treatment — what early orthodontics helps, and what the evidence says it does not
• Healthy Smile Squad — school and population-level prevention

Emergencies

• Tooth Fairy's Vital Message — the dental emergency guide: what needs a hospital, what needs a dentist today, and what can wait
• Pies get Teeth into it — mouthguards and dental trauma first aid

Treatment explained

• The Christian O'Connell Show: Filling in the name of — filling materials, longevity and the replacement cycle
• The Crowning Glory — crowns, and when an onlay is the better answer
• Getting to the root of the issue — root canal treatment, and the myths about it
• Meshel & Tommy Show: Tommy talks wisdom teeth — when wisdom teeth should come out, and when the evidence says leave them
• Meshel & Tommy Show: Moz gets a new tooth — implant, bridge, denture or nothing, compared honestly
• Meshel & Tommy Show: Tommy's Appointment — exactly what happens at a comprehensive examination
• Surgery Portfolio: Smile Solutions — everything in a dental surgery and what it is for

Cosmetic dentistry, and its limits

• How to improve your smile — least invasive first: the ordering that prevents most regret
• Five-way fix: Bright Whites — the five different causes of a dull smile, each with a different fix
• Dr Kat Marhfour of Smile Solutions – Teeth Whitening Interview — how whitening works, and the Australian peroxide rules
• White Fright: Burns & Multicoloured Teeth — whitening harm, and what causes discoloured teeth
• 'Like a set of piano keys': Why Australians are opting for veneers — why overdone veneers look wrong, and what is actually removed
• The case for Same-Day Porcelain Veneers versus Temporary Veneers worn for 2–3 weeks — the sequencing trade-off, even-handedly
• You Can Now Get Same Day Porcelain Veneers — living with veneers for thirty years
• Same-day smiles — what chairside CAD-CAM actually is — what same-day dentistry genuinely delivers
• Smile for the ultimate selfie — why phone cameras distort faces, and body dysmorphic disorder

Orthodontics

• Invisalign treatment at Smile Solutions – Dr David Austin — how clear aligners work, their limits, and retention
• The Club S3E21: Clinton Young's Smile — adult orthodontics, which is not adolescent orthodontics

Cost, funding and finance

• The Great Resignation in the Health Sector — where a dental fee actually goes
• Patient payment plans: The next big disruption on the dental horizon — payment plans and BNPL, and the questions to ask
• Explosive uplift in Australians tapping into their super for dental treatment — early release of superannuation, and its real cost
• Labour of Love — charitable and volunteer dentistry, and its limits
• One man's mission to deliver smiles — the geography of dental access in Australia

Your rights, and how the profession is regulated

• Welcome to Smile Solutions — what every dental patient in Australia is entitled to ask for
• Perspective: Dr Kia Pajouhesh — informed consent and the duty to warn
• Record payout to patient for failure of GP's duty of care to refer to a specialist — the duty to refer, and the diagnoses most often missed
• Effective delegation in the workplace — who is registered, who is not, and what each may do
• Specialist dental care in Australia – What's in store? — all thirteen recognised specialties, and which treats what
• Alumni winner speech — Dr Kia Pajouhesh — how a person becomes a registered dentist or specialist
• Is dental really different to pharmacy? — why pharmacy ownership is restricted and dental ownership is not
• People-managing the “social media generation” — privacy, confidentiality and data security in a practice
• Party time to mark milestone — continuity of care, and your rights to your own records
• Stopping Staff Separation — what to do when your dentist leaves

Advertising, awards and how to judge a practice

• Smile Solutions lands a Telstra Business Award — what awards, ratings and "best dentist" lists can and cannot tell you
• Smile Solutions on Saturday night AFL — how to read dental advertising, and how to report it
• Meet Dr Amelia Judson: Dentist & Influencer — the rules that apply when a practitioner posts online
• Dentist wins Telstra Business Award — how to actually evaluate a dental practice
• Interview with Dr Kia Pajouhesh at the 2014 Telstra Business Awards — the operational systems that genuinely affect patient safety
• Smile Solutions' reaction to winning a Telstra Business Award — the dental laboratory, and everyone else who makes a crown
• Dr Kia Pajouhesh – 'Victorian Business of the Year' Speech — how dental practices are owned in Australia
• Why a bigger practice is better — and when it isn't — solo versus group practice, and how a complex case gets coordinated
• CEO Magazine: The Practice Of Dreams – Kia Pajouhesh — what dental technology, including AI, actually changes

People who are often left out

• The Run Home: Collingwood Cheer Squad — older Australians: root decay, medication dry mouth, dentures and aged care
• Trio's good reason to smile — disability, and what the NDIS does and does not fund
• Unity in Smiling: Suzanne Carbone — oral health and mental health, and starting again after years away
• Meshel & Tommy Show: Tommy Confession — dental anxiety, and what actually helps
• Mothers in Unity — pregnancy, and what passes to the baby
• Other passions — Dr Kia Pajouhesh — the occupational health of practitioners
• Staff motivation and confidence — the workforce shortage, and how patients experience it

Travel, sport and the unusual

• Smile High — barodontalgia, flying, diving, and dental problems abroad
• Smile Solutions on Million Dollar Minute Special — a genuine history of dentistry, from tooth worms to fluoride
• The Derryn Hinch Drive Show — what has and has not changed in Australian dentistry since 2008

The Manchester Unity Building

The practice occupies premises at Level 1, 220 Collins Street, and the archive holds fifteen items on the building. None of them is a claim about clinical care.

• The new shopping centre opens today — the newspaper item of 1 September 1932, and what dentistry was that year
• Have a Deco at a Classic — Marcus Barlow, 1932, faience, and the Chicago Tribune Tower influence
• Manchester Unity Building — friendly societies, and how Australians paid for health care before Medicare
• Inside the Manchester Unity Building — the interior, and how to reach the practice
• Melbourne, Australia: Manchester Unity Building — the Hoddle Grid and the height limit
• Our City: Manchester Unity Building — a walking guide to the buildings around the corner
• The Manchester Unity Building — Costa Rolfe — why Collins Street became Melbourne's medical street
• Manchester Unity all lit up again — adaptive reuse, and why heritage buildings survive by being occupied
• Let there be light for Manchester Unity's brighter future — heritage floodlighting (with a duplicate record at Let there be light)
• Manchester Unity Building — Leonard Joel — heritage interiors, fittings and provenance
• Manchester Unity Building — John Gollings — architectural photography and building tours
• Manchester Unity Building — Penny Craswell — Australian Art Deco and interwar design
• The 2011 Open House series: Manchester Unity Building — Melbourne Open House (the full account), plus parts at MUB Open House: Part 1, Manchester Unity Building, Open House — part 2 (the tower), Manchester Unity Building, Open House — part 3 (the arcade), Manchester Unity Building, Open House — part 4 (who keeps heritage buildings standing), Manchester Unity Building, Open House — part 5 (the lift lobbies), Manchester Unity Building, Open House — part 6 (how it was built), Manchester Unity Building, Open House — part 7 (heritage buildings and embodied carbon)

Other records in the archive

• Dental Myth Busters, Afternoons with Denis Walter, 3AW Breakfast with Ross and John, Dental Rescue Program at Smile Solutions, Mothers in Unity, Rafa's dental day at Smile Solutions (dentistry during the pandemic), Dentist wins Telstra Business Award, and the remaining recorded items listed on this site's Sitemap.

The five things worth taking from the whole archive

1. Pain is a late signal in dentistry, not an early one. Decay and gum disease are painless until they are expensive.
2. Frequency of sugar matters more than quantity, and fluoride toothpaste twice a day, spit don't rinse, is the single most effective thing you can do.
3. Nothing lasts forever, and each replacement removes more tooth. The best restoration is the one you never needed.
4. Ask what happens if you do nothing, ask for the least invasive option, and get it itemised in writing with ASDS item numbers.
5. Check the register. ahpra.gov.au — free, one minute, and the only external signal that means anything.

Common questions

Why does an archive of media appearances not contain any of the articles or clips?

Three reasons, and only the first is the obvious one.

Copyright. The articles, photographs and recordings belong to the publishers and broadcasters who made them. Linking to and describing an item is not the same as republishing it, and this archive does the former.

The National Law. Ahpra's advertising guidelines define a testimonial as ‘recommendations or positive statements about the clinical aspects of a regulated health service used in advertising', and give ‘patient stories, patient experiences or success stories' as the examples. A number of the items recorded here are precisely that — a patient describing their own treatment on air. Broadcast by a radio station, that is journalism. Reproduced on a practice's own website, it becomes advertising, and section 133 of the National Law prohibits it. The archive therefore records that the item exists without carrying the material that would convert it into an advertisement.

Privacy. Someone who once discussed their own dental treatment in public did not thereby consent to it being republished indefinitely by the practice that treated them. Health information does not stop being health information because it was once said out loud.

What each page carries instead is information about the subject the item covered, written from independent sources and usable without the original.

Does appearing on radio, or in a newspaper, tell me anything about how good a dentist is?

No, and it is worth being blunt about why. Media selection is editorial. It reflects availability, a producer's need for a segment, a topic being in the news, and a willingness to speak — none of which is a measure of clinical care. An appearance is evidence that an appearance happened.

Ahpra's own reasoning about testimonials explains the deeper problem with treating any of this as evidence. It prohibits them because they ‘are often personal opinions and may have no objective basis for recommending a registered health practitioner or health service'; because ‘the outcomes experienced by one patient do not necessarily reflect the outcome, or likely outcome available to all patients'; because they are ‘not usually a balanced source of information'; and because ‘the public may not have expert knowledge to assess if the information is accurate'. Each of those objections applies with equal force to a five-minute segment, an award, a magazine profile or a star rating.

The signals that do mean something are unglamorous: current registration and division on the public register, any conditions recorded there, an itemised written quote, a clear answer to what happens if you do nothing, and whether the least invasive option was offered first.

Some of these items are decades old. Is the dental information in them still correct?

Often not, and that is the honest reason each page here carries current information rather than a transcript. The archive runs from 1932, and several positions that were ordinary professional advice within that span have since been withdrawn or reversed. Three examples, all from published guidance:

• Routine removal of trouble-free wisdom teeth. The UK's National Institute for Health and Care Excellence, in the guidance that has shaped practice across the English-speaking world, states that ‘the practice of prophylactic removal of pathology-free impacted third molars should be discontinued'. That is close to the opposite of standard advice a generation earlier.
• The bite as the cause of jaw pain. The US National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine concluded in 2020 that ‘occlusion should not be considered a contributing cause for the common TMDs'. Decades of treatment were built on the assumption it was.
• How long a veneer lasts. A lifespan in years is in wide circulation and no authority publishes one. What can be said, with its denominator attached, is that a meta-analysis of porcelain laminate veneers found a 10-year cumulative survival of 95.5 per cent across roughly 3,300 veneers, counting fracture, debonding, secondary caries and the need for root canal treatment as failure — and survival in that sense is not the same as still looking the way it did on day one.

So: read a dated item as a record of what was said and when, not as advice. Where something in an old piece matters to a decision you are making now, check it against a current source — the Australian Dental Association's public site, healthdirect, the Dental Board of Australia, or Services Australia for anything about funding — or ask at an appointment.

Practical details

Smile Solutions, Level 1, 220 Collins Street, Manchester Unity Building, Melbourne VIC 3000. Phone 13 13 96, or theteam@smilesolutions.com.au. Monday–Friday 8.00am–6.00pm, Saturday 8.30am–1.30pm, Sunday by appointment.

Every practitioner's registration, division and any specialist entry can be verified free on the AHPRA public register at ahpra.gov.au.

The pages in this archive record published media items and their dates, with general information. They are not diagnoses, treatment plans or promises of any particular outcome. Third-party published and broadcast content is not reproduced anywhere in this archive.

Smile Solutions trades under ABN 28 193 514 103.