A trial equilibration is an absolute mandatory exercise to be done on properly mounted study models.
Digital photography is an integral part of my diagnosis and treatment planning. It is also an integral part of The Dawson Academy philosophy. Knowing how to introduce digital photography to your team will ensure that they will know how to properly take photos that can be used during the diagnosis and treatment planning stage.
Here at The Dawson Academy, we get a lot of questions. Among all of the questions I hear from our students, one of the main questions that we get is why is my dentistry breaking? And what can I do to prevent that from happening again?
Dental occlusion is the absolute backbone of everything that we do here at The Dawson Academy. Dental occlusion is important because it affects how the teeth react, how the muscles react, how the joint reacts.
It starts out with exquisite, accurate records on your part.
Start with a healthy joint, make sure that it's seated properly, in Centric Relation. Then we want all the teeth to come together with equal pressure, and then when the jaw moves at all, just the front teeth touch.
Conservative dentistry, to me, is gathering all the information up that we can in a complete exam.
We want to make sure that if it is just a couple of crowns and cleaning, then that is what we want to do. If the patient needs more functional or esthetic desires, then we can do that. But even on those levels, we are trying to do the very least amount of dentistry to solve all of their problems and what they need to do with that.
I explain the complete exam to the patient only after the preclinical interview. I interview the patient, ask them while they're here what they're looking for from me. And then from there, I simply tell them that I need to gather more information and records. And I explain to them all what we're doing. Checking their teeth out, periodontal health, but also we're going to look at their joints and their muscles.
It’s important to keep in mind, when assessing prototypes for final restorations, we are in the third step of treatment. At this stage we have a complete exam, a diagnosis and treatment plan, and a full contour wax up.
Our dental labs should be an integral part of our dental treatment planning process so that we are able to provide the highest quality dental solutions to our patients. A top-end dental lab will welcome as much information from the dentist as possible. In turn, it is also important for the doctor to have input from the lab during the treatment planning stage, as they are an integral part of the interdisciplinary team. Unfortunately, all too often our communication with them seems to break down, or is, at times, even nonexistent. To prevent this failure in communication, it pays to have a plan.
