October 8, 2015

Summer comes early to Colonial Williamsburg. Poppies, our nation’s brilliant symbol of remembrance, are in full bloom by Memorial Day. I just love the town’s wigmaker’s shop, which also would have doubled as the town barber shop. It was fashionable for well-to-do young ladies to have their heads shaved at such shops prior to being fitted for a wig. By 1775, the year this living-history site is modeled on, the barber no longer extracted teeth.

October 5, 2015

Let’s face it, no one likes to hear the word “No.” But the reality is, despite the economic upturn, patients are still reluctant to say “Yes” to larger treatment plans. A 2014 American Dental Association (ADA) study found that 40 percent of adults indicated that they will forgo dental care due to cost.1 Clearly, a healthy mouth shouldn’t be an “either/or” proposition for patients, but no one wants to be a pushy sales person either.

September 23, 2015

Guided surgery for implant placement provides great benefits for clinicians but can also create complications. Because of this dichotomy, some dentists shy away from its use. As part of a webinar series for the Academy of Osseointegration (AO), Dr. Jaime Lozada presented the advantages and disadvantages of guided surgery. He also shared how to minimize some of the common complications associated it.

September 11, 2015

During the past several years, the orthodontic field has become quite competitive. Now more than ever, orthodontists need to focus on what makes their practice stand out. They need to figure out what it is about their practices that would appeal to potential new patients. Surprisingly, the lowest fee is not always the ideal differentiator.

August 15, 2015

John Russo DDS, MHS, is a periodontist in Sarasota, Fla. He graduated from The Ohio State University College of Dentistry and received a periodontics certificate from the Medical University of South Carolina as well as a master in health sciences degree. Today he is a clinical assistant professor of periodontics at the Medical University of South Carolina, a diplomat of the International Congress of Oral Implantologists and a nationally recognized expert in dental implants and bone grafting.

July 28, 2015

Since placing his first implant nearly 45 years ago, Dr. Jack Hahn has spent much of his career as an implantologist thinking of ways to make treatment more accessible to the practitioner as well as the patient. Implant design has improved dramatically during that time, with Hahn spearheading key innovations that have helped make implant therapy the essential mode of dental treatment it is today.

June 11, 2015

Earth Day this year coincided with some of the best walking weather New York City has seen in a very long time. I was lucky enough to have been out of the office and up on an elevated park called The High Line. Once a stretch of railway designed to bring produce and other goods into the city, it is now a diverse landscape of natural beauty. Even on the hottest day, soft breezes flow up from the nearby Hudson River. It took about 10 years from conception to completion.

June 10, 2015

Is there a technology you’ve come to rely on so much that you can’t imagine how you ever got along without it? For me, that technology is digital radiography with flexible wireless sensors. When I first started private practice, we used film radiography exclusively. After a few years, we invested in a wired digital sensor system.

June 9, 2015

Intraoral welding was developed by Pierluigi Mondani of Genoa, Italy, in the 1970s to permanently connect submerged implants and abutments to a titanium wire or bar by means of an electric current (Fig. 1). The current is used to permanently fuse the titanium to the abutments in milliseconds, so the heat generated does not cause any pathology or patient discomfort.

May 3, 2015

Reputation marketing is now the most trusted and effective form of online marketing for any dental practice. Moreover, sites such as Yelp and Google My Business directly affect the buying decisions of millions of patients on a daily basis. Here are quotes from three highly respected business journals:

April 22, 2015

A newly developed system for endodontic cleaning and disinfection — GentleWave — utilizes broad-spectrum acoustic energy to remove all pulp tissue, debris, decay and bacteria from the entire root canal system. This pioneering technology — developed by Sonendo — employs advanced fluid dynamics and hydroacoustics to create effective cleaning.

April 16, 2015

More than three decades have passed since the emergence of human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) as a global pandemic. More than any other infection, it is possible to single out HIV as the primary stimulus for changing infection control practices in dentistry. Prior to the mid-1980s, it was uncommon for dentists and allied professionals to wear gloves during routine dental procedures.

April 8, 2015

Any regular reader of the Journal of Oral & Maxillofacial Implants or indeed of any other publication on dental implants could not fail to have noticed how much attention has been focused on primary stability. The concept of primary stability is not new; indeed, as early as the 1970s, there were studies emphasizing the need to establish mechanical stability to ensure un-interrupted healing of the bone.

April 7, 2015

If you want to keep working, only on a less demanding schedule, you’re not alone. Many people these days are considering a “partial retirement.” According to a University of Michigan study, 20 percent of those ages 65 to 67 consider themselves partially retired, while in 1960 this group was nonexistent.

March 19, 2015

While anxiously waiting for the “Downton Abbey” television series to start up again, I got my English history fix by reading the history of Wentworth Castle. The book covered the trials and tribulations of an aristocratic family in a home three times the size of Buckingham Palace. 

March 10, 2015

Micromotion at the implant-abutment level has been identified as a major determinant of long-term implant success. Technical problems ranging from screw loosening to screw fracture may occur as a consequence of excessive micromotion. Different concepts for the design of the implant-abutment connection have been proposed in the past. These affect micromotion at the restorative interface as well as the stability of the abutments used.

February 20, 2015

This is a continuation of the fourth article in a series of Dental Tribune clinical articles dealing with cosmetic periodontal surgery. As a follow-up to Part 4A, Part 4B in this series focuses on barriers used in cosmetic periodontal surgery. It also presents and deals with the predictable regenerative coverage of unesthetic root recession through cosmetic periodontal surgery, using the guided tissue regeneration (GTR) technique with resorbable barriers.

February 13, 2015

I can always tell when I’m in great need of a vacation: I start to dream about teeth. There are more subtle signs that often escape me. The first of which is the emergence of the robotic hygienist. She lurks inside of me and, fortunately for all those involved, doesn’t rear her ugly head too often. The other is the OCD hygienist. The one who doesn’t enjoy the human variety of her coworkers and sees them only through OSHA-colored glasses.

February 9, 2015

Fixed hybrid dentures have been used to successfully restore fully edentulous patients for decades. Their durability, however, leaves room for improvement. There are three issues that can complicate the long-term success of the traditional fixed hybrid denture: The acrylic teeth tend to wear; the teeth can fracture or dislodge from the acrylic base; and the acrylic base itself can fracture.

February 4, 2015

In 2012, I led a team of three dentists and two hygienists on a dental mission to Haiti, where we volunteered our time to provide free dental care in a country where there is just a single dentist for every 100,000 people. It was an eye-opening experience, and one that was more rewarding than I ever thought possible.

January 27, 2015

You know how those days go — all morning long, it felt like you were struggling to keep on track with the schedule. Your team is frustrated because they haven’t had their full hour lunch more than one day a week in as long as they can remember. You walked by the sterilization room 15 minutes ago, and it sure sounded like they were complaining to each other because you said to work in that emergency, and they were struggling to figure out how to get to their kid at daycare on time. Again.

January 27, 2015

Background: Current implant protocols require not only osseointegration but also high levels of soft-tissue stability and esthetics. Crestal bone changes and their impact on soft-tissue architecture are the most unpredictable and undesirable consequences of implant therapy, especially in the anterior maxilla.

January 21, 2015

Part I: Background of orthodontic education from 1000 BC to 1727: Orthodontics dates back to 1000 BC (Proffit, Fields, & Sarver, 2007). Proffit et al. (2007) stated, “Crowded, irregular, and protruding teeth have been a problem for some individuals since antiquity, and attempts to correct this disorder go back at least to 1000 BC. Primitive orthodontic appliances … have been found in both Greek and Etruscan materials” (p. 3).

January 8, 2015

As a patient, I expect the best care I can find. As a doctor, I want to deliver the best care possible. That takes us to the power of continuing education, and as doctors we are faced with many choices in continuing education. As a way to introduce you to the Las Vegas Institute for Advanced Dental Studies, or LVI, I want to outline what LVI is about and what void it fills in your practice.

January 5, 2015

Being productive in a dental office requires a combination of events that eventually becomes the heart of a healthy dental practice. No single event is predominant over another, and nothing can be left out. These “events” are areas of our practices that we, from time to time, try to bear down on to make our practice and our daily lives better. That point at which your practice starts to show signs of being non-productive is not the time to initiate the drive.

December 23, 2014

A 21-year-old male presented with a chief complaint of relapse of adolescent orthodontic treatment. He expressed an interest in clear aligner therapy for alignment and improved esthetics. Past medical history was unremarkable other than he was a nasal breather. The examination showed a slightly convex profile with a long face.

December 14, 2014

I have a passion for technology, because it bridges the gap of communication between clinician and patient. This year, I decided to give myself something that would make my experience as a dentist more enjoyable — appropriately, on my 33rd birthday. I write this article to express my enthusiasm for that “gift” to myself, a product that has honestly blown me away: the Schick 33 intraoral digital sensor.

December 9, 2014

Having used DrQuickLook SD for some time now, I see how its range gets larger each and every day. By that I mean I find more and more uses for it. I can literally tell when I need to use it. I get to a quiet, thoughtful spot in the patient visit — thinking how I am going to tell the patient a bit of bad news perhaps and that is when it happens — I grab the DrQuickLook SD and do a show and tell. I always feel “saved” after that happens because it helps me through those stressful moments.

December 8, 2014

Did you know that 60 percent of social-media users are on mobile devices? What happens when one of them tries to contact you, but your site is unusable on his or her device? Here are three specific reasons you should adopt a mobile format to grow your practice.

December 8, 2014

As a practicing dentist of more than 34 years, I want to buy products that have an impact on my practice. As inventor of DrQuickLook products, I am asked about how these intraoral cameras are used in my practice. I recently transitioned to our latest and greatest units — DrQuickLook SD Basic and SD Plus. I thought I would try to relate my office usage to some issues that come up all too often in the practice. See if any of these ring a bell!