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Dental Blog
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What if there was a very simple exam that you could do as part of every routine dental exam that could potentially save a patient’s life? Well, there is: an oral cancer screening. As a general practitioner, you are on the front line of detection for this potentially deadly disease.

Wellness dentistry is becoming more of a thing in dentistry, and for good reason. If you’re looking for a way to elevate your patients’ health and build your practice in the process, wellness dentistry can get you there.

If you’re in a rut in your career and feeling burned out, how do you reignite your passion for dentistry, feel healthy and maintain your enthusiasm for your practice? Perhaps more importantly, how do you avoid getting to the point of severe burnout in the first place?

Lithium disilicate restorations are the most popular aesthetic ceramic restorations being placed today. Understanding the material and how to handle and deliver it is therefore critical for most dentists. An essential part of this is mastering time-proven techniques that can decrease problems and increase the longevity of your lithium disilicate restorations.

When it comes to choosing the right material for an indirect restoration, the decision point has always come down to two things: strength vs. aesthetics. Now an innovative new zirconia is changing this.

Your dental handpiece is the workhorse of your practice. But even though you need it to perform reliably day after day, in a manner that gives you predictable clinical outcomes, chances are you take it for granted. Perhaps it’s time to change that!

Cracked teeth are extremely common. A patient will bite down on something hard and a crack will propagate right down into the dentin or pulp – even if the tooth already has a composite in it. Wouldn’t it be great if you could prevent this?

Your patients might think that their temporaries are, by definition, only meant to be a temporary way to provide them with functionality. In reality the role of temporaries goes way beyond this, so it’s very important that you get them right.

The seventeenth century English poet George Herbert once said, “Skill and confidence are an unconquered army.” Which is true. But when it comes to offering veneer treatments for your patients, if you’re like many dentists you may have a great deal of fear because you worry that your skills are not up to the task.

When it comes to veneers, many will agree that the cementation process is the scariest part. There’s a lot of room for error here, so how can you ease the pressure? Learn how…

Which do you think is best for sustained supragingival biofilm reduction: Brushing and flossing OR brushing and rinsing with antiseptic rinse? If you’re like most dental professionals, the answer will surprise you.

What’s the fastest growing age group today? People over the age of 80! Geriatric dentistry is a reality. If you’re not already servicing this age group, it could be a hidden potential production area in your practice.

You’ve seen the demonstrations of intraoral scanners. You know that digital impressions are pretty impressive. But if you’re not doing milling in-house are there any good reasons to make the switch anyway? As it turns out, the answer is a resounding “yes!”

You’ve done the exam, studied the images and created an excellent treatment plan. Then the patient utters those four dreaded words: “I can’t afford it.” What could you have done differently to get to “yes?”

One universal composite with just five shades that cover all 16 VITA shades plus all of those pesky “in between” shades. That’s what today’s adaptive shade matching technology can give you, to simplify your restorative dentistry.

While patients dread root canals, they are even less happy about losing teeth. If a conventional root canal is not an option, what else can you do to save the tooth? Sometimes the answer is an apicoectomy.

With so many different types of cements, cements are one of the most confusing topics for dentists. But once we understand the basics, we can ask appropriate questions and pick and choose those that best fit the restorative needs of the case.

You spend all day, every day operating in a field of vision that’s smaller than a tennis ball - and that field is often in a less-than-perfect position. If you don’t want to join the ranks of clinicians who cut their practice years short because they’re in too much pain to continue, you must pay attention to ergonomics.

Pity the lowly bur. Although it plays a vitally important role in every procedure in operative dentistry, it’s rarely in the limelight—but it should be. You can be a skilled dentist with excellent technique, but if you choose a bur that isn’t up to the task at hand, you’re going to have a hard time getting the results you desire.

No one wants ugly teeth, so it’s no surprise that tooth whitening is so popular. The question is: Should you be doing chairside whitening or should you be shifting your patients to using take-home bleaching systems? Or will you get better results by using both?

All rubber dams are difficult and time-consuming to place, prone to tearing, hated by patients and an all-around pain. Right? Wrong! In fact, these thoughts are at the crux of the Rubber Dam Misconception.

Today’s dental patients are hungry for prevention strategies that work and lead to less need for restorative care. Long gone are the days when dental practices focused solely on the challenge of restoring decayed dentition. In fact, what we’ve seen is that focusing on prevention is a win/win/win for you, your patients and your practice.

Every hour another person dies of oral cancer. The question is, what are you doing to ensure that your patients do not become part of this horrific statistic? If you’re not already doing complete oral cancer screenings (including fluorescence visualization), now’s the time to change this.

Whether or not you’ve already discovered the benefits of warm composites and the difference they can make in your workflow, you’re going to want to read this. Using thermoviscous technology, VOCO has found a way to essentially give you two - a flowable composite and a sculptable composite - in one.

Tired of juggling and tracking multiple bottles of bonding agent, trying to avoid throwing out materials because they expire before you use them? The newer universal bonding agents let you streamline your bonding systems, reduce your inventory and save money - without sacrificing quality results.

Each year a host of new products are introduced that each claim to solve problems, streamline processes and provide excellent results for our patients. How can you know if a given product actually lives up to its claims?