A hot time in the old club tonight?


I host my study club nine or ten times a year. I always make sure to provide tasty food before hand, because, you know...food tends to sooth the savage beast ( just joking). I started the meeting by discussing our club renewals ( this usually involves my members being informed of their yearly renewal fee!). I then moved on to presenting what I thought was an interesting multidisciplinary case involving a single tooth replacement of a maxillary central incisor.

This was the sort of  case that many experienced dentists experience some trepidation before treating. We all have patients like this one and a positive outcome is never a forgone conclusion. After years of practice most of us have experienced a poor outcome or two. Most of us are always searching for a slightly better recipe in order to achieve a trouble free way to ensure degree of predictable road to achieving a beautiful result that will stand the test of time. This is why I believe that most of our members are experience practitioners who have earned their  share of grey hairs. Yes we have some younger members but the format promotes comprehensive ideal care and can feature complicated cases of the type  that most younger members have not yet had the pleasure to treat and watch fail eventually. Experienced practitioners know that sooner or later these cases will show up in their practices and they really need to know how treat patients who do not want to be referred out to some other dentist if possible. When we do choose to treat a complicated case we really understand how much time and money will be invested by us and our patient and a failure ends up costing our practices money and can harm our standing with a loyal patient as well.

My case presentation had an end result that was quite nice, if I am allowed a little immodesty, but unexpectedly, when we discussed our treatment planning for the case a "lively" discussion ensued. There was no real consensus as exactly how the missing tooth should be replaced: suggestions included a single tooth implant, a three unit bridge, a four unit bridge, a six unit bridge, or extraction of the adjacent intact central and the placement of a two tooth cantilever implant restoration. Our clubs conversation was animated to say the least and many of the members of my club are highly knowledgeable and are passionately vocal when voicing their opinions.

Fortunately by the end of my presentation we had all made up and a good time was had by all. I think this back and forth between highly competent dentists is actually our reason for attending the club, since it can be extremely enlightening hearing how each of us goes about diagnosing and treatment planning difficult cases.









from Ask Dr. Spindel - http://lspindelnycdds.blogspot.com/2018/02/a-hot-time-in-old-club-tonight.html - http://lspindelnycdds.blogspot.com/

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