Meeting review: 2018 Midwinter Meeting in Chicago

Robert Selleck (DTA)

Tue. 27 February 2018

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CHICAGO, Ill., USA: The Chicago Dental Society’s 2018 Midwinter Meeting was held Feb 22 to 24, and whether you came for the deals and stayed for the pizza, or vice versa, you ended up winning no matter what. In the exhibit hall, deep discounts and other show-specials were standard fare. You could stock up on staples or take advantage of introductory opportunities on new products and services.

The choices seemed endless. In the Trans America Medical booth, you could find a list of 10 show-special deals on an array of dental instruments. The 40-year old company was attending its 28th Midwinter Meeting.

In another booth, you could ask Lars Kahre or another Futudent rep about special Midwinter pricing on the company’s EduCam. The ultralight, full-HD 1080p video camera can mount on a loupe or a headmount for precise, hands-free, point-of-view or overhead filming of everything you’re seeing and doing. It can magnify two to eight times.

Coltene had special pricing on NiTi HyFlex EDM refills. The NiTi files are available in 21 mm and 25 mm lengths. Salvin had show-special bulk pricing on its OSS xenograft bone graft material. You could save $200 in Chicago on lightweight loupes and the LED DayLite high-def headlight in the Designs for Vision booths. You could get free samples of Denta-Glove Ergoform products and take advantage of Ansell’s everyday low prices.

It was not just the deals, of course, that made the exhibit hall a major draw. Getting the opportunity to check out the newest advancements in diagnostics, treatment and patient comfort was just as valuable. Among the most interesting this year: Dex Voice in the KaVo booth. According to Ryan Hungate, DDS, of Dex Voice, practitioners will never have to take their gloves off again when wanting to review imaging scans. The Amazon Echo/Alexa smart speaker lets you control virtually all of your Dexis software via voice command.

If your journey to the meeting included the Blue Line from O’Hare, you might have ended up in a train car with its interior-wrap advertising devoted entirely to the Quip electric toothbrush. The first-time exhibitor in Chicago is known for strategically advertising beyond the exhibit halls in cities hosting major dental meetings it attends.

In 2017 for the Greater New York Dental Meeting, the Brooklyn-based company ran ads in trains using the new subway station near the Jacob K. Javits Convention Center. In the Midwinter exhibit hall in Chicago, the Quip booth was seeing a steady flow of visitors listening to a quick overview about how practices can make the toothbrush easily available to patients and benefit from a dental-connect platform designed to keep practices closely connected to existing and potential patients.

The final step in the booth experience is walking away with a sleek Quip toothbrush, a tube of Quip toothpaste, a coupon for a replacement head, a brochure welcoming you to the Quip brand and some literature about Quip’s other products and services.

Reflecting the dental industry’s ever-increasing pace of innovation and expansion, the Midwinter Meeting had numerous new exhibitors this year — along with an even broader array of new products and services.

First-time exhibitor Dentkist offered a variety of products, ranging from impression material to handpieces. The Korean-based company, among the top-five companies in its sector in Korea, is conducting business in 65 countries, and a few months ago it received FDA clearance to operate in the U.S. The “KIST” in Dentkist stands for “Korean Institute of Science and Technology,” a science-and-technology national think tank in Seoul that has launched many science-based businesses.

First-time-exhibitor Ignite DDS was handing out a small book that gives you a feel for its free continuing education community for dental students and young dental professionals. Not far away, the Academy of Microscope Enhanced Dentistry was here for the first time.

The concept of “new” in the exhibit hall wasn’t limited to first-time exhibitors. You could stroll down any aisle and encounter plenty of new products, too.

KaVo was demonstrating three new products to dental-industry-media representatives. Among the products was the Dexis FS Ergo flexible Digital Intraoral X-Ray Sensor, which in addition to being small has a soft housing that “gives” during X-rays, making it extremely gentle for patients.

Among the many educational opportunities, the agenda included live-patient demonstrations.

Frank Milnar, DDS, of St. Paul, Minn., presented “Power of Pink: Techniques for Pink Prosthetic Restorations With Bioactive Composites,” and Robert Margeas, DDS, of Des Moines, Iowa, presented “How to Close a Diastema.” Another live-patient demonstration featured Lee Silverstein, DDS, of Marietta, Ga., presenting “Soft-tissue augmentation using Alloderm.”

The sessions were free but ticketed, requiring preregistration and timely arrival for first-come, first-served seating.

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