Dental Info

 It really depends on the dentist and his practice. I personally enjoy doing some of our patients cleanings. Historically  I have always been open to accepting hygiene appointments and find it a good way of connecting with our patients.  That being the case, many dentists choose to employ hygienist to do their patients recare appointments in order to free up time for them to do their restorative dental or other more challenging and lucrative procedures. For most of my career I have employed hygienists to perform some of the cleanings for my patients. This was an efficient way to handle recare and most paitents like having a hygienist clean their teeth. Still some patients seemed to prefer my cleanings and the time I would spend with them. When my son David has joined our practice, He also accepted hygiene appointments. As a matter of fact, recently when my long time hygienist left, we decided not to  replace her and My son and I have been able to absorb her patient...

 In the last 10 years or so , it has never been easier to deliver both excellent and time efficent dentistry for my patients. New technologies and materials have made this true. At this point, for most crowns I utilize either Zirconium or lithium dislicate materials to fabricate monolithic crowns , that are easier to fit and more durable than the older pfms that I utilized. While I still schedule one hr for fitting my crowns, truth be told, they now rarely require the full hr and often are completed and my patient dismissed in about 35-45 mins. Also digital radiographs, 3d scanning and AI , when used properly, are terrific tools that make a dentists easier. All of our technologies still require skill and judgment to provide optimal outcomes, but I am convinced that when properly utilized these tools make dentists better at achieving great results for our patients. Our office doesn't do single visit permanent crowns since the labs I use probably provide a higher quality result the...

Many dentists are in at least two businesses. First and formost is their dental practice. This should be by far our most important endeavor.  This is in my opinion our most rewarding business, since it usually provides the most financial and professional satisfaction. That being said , I and many other dentists maintain dental offices that are larger than we need for our own personal needs. In fact our dental supply houses strongly encourage us to build offices with extra operatories for other dentists to use.These operatories give us the opportunity to obtain sublet rental income or facilitate our hiring another dentist(s) to see patients.  In my case, for most of my career, I have sublet one of the operatories in my office and this allows me rent a more spacious office .  I have dabbled with hiring a dentist using my extrao peratory  but truth be told , this hasn't worked out so well for me. Employee dentists seem to come and go and place additional stress on m...

 When dental students are studying to become dentists, often their schools focus on teaching a 'core curiculum'. The logic is that dental schools want to make sure their graduates achieve a level of basic skills and can perform procedures to a level of competency. Often there is a conscious decision made to not 'confuse' our students. That being said there are many ways to do dentistry and students of dentistry need to be open to learning new ideas and new ways of doing their dentistry Unfortunately many dentists fall into a complacency trap , where they develop a routine way of doing procedures and aren't always open to learning different ways of doing things. They probably believe that doing things the same will provide consistent acceptable results. This is what I mean by cookbook dentistry since they probably find it easy to follow their recipe over and over again. The problem is that dentistry (and all professions) is constantly changing and improving and we ...

 I am asked this question almost every week by someone. The answer is obvious.... I am doing what I enjoy. I am seeing patients in my office 4 days per week (with some help from my son David) and teaching at the Mount Sinai General Practice Residency on my day off (Friday). The truth is that being able to do what I am good at , helping my patients and my residents every week is very satisfying. It keeps my mind and body active and healthy.  I still participate in three Spear Study Clubs and enjoy interacting with my study club collegues This  activity allows me to earn over 90 hrs of continuing ed each year and almost every week I learn something new about dentistry I plan on continuing as long as my mind and body allow me to maintain the high level of service that I am accustomed to offering in my clinical practice and my teaching position.  Being at service and having a purpose makes my life more worthwhile and I feel truly blessed to have been given the opportuni...

                                                                                Often it is desirable to increase the length of a patients anterior teeth. We can have our dental laboratory make a wax up proposal and can often transfer this proposal to the mouth by utilizing a putty matrix made from the wax up. These proposals are very helpful, but they may not be representative of the most desirable shape of the final restorations. Because the finished crown need to function in the mouth and allow dental excursions and most dentists prefer cuspid guidance. Cuspid guidance means that when a patient moves their lower jaw laterally their canine tooth bears the brunt of the occlusion. Although other teeth can be used to bear the forces created by lateral jaw movements, most dentists pr...