TRICKS OF THE TRADE
In
the dentist's routine clinical practice he very often
invents new or different ways to do a particular dental
procedure which may not be found in the text books. He
find means to do the dental treatment faster, better and
more accurately. He also finds some material or
instruments which is not very popular to be of immense
use in his daily practice. Its an irony that even though
we have all been taught to do a procedure in one
particular fashion, we all do it differently.
Here,
in this article, Dr. Uday Shetty has compiled procedures in the various
fields of dentistry which may not be commonplace and yet
very useful for the general practitioner. Every dental
practitioner has found his unique way of doing a dental
procedure. Hence, we encourage you to e-mail to us and
contribute in this ongoing article to your dental
colleagues all over the world by sharing with them the
TRICKS OF THE TRADE in your clinic.
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When a patient comes for a
recall after wearing a new removable denture, he
often complains of pain in a particular area
where the soft tissue is sore and red. Its
sometimes difficult to co-relate that spot onto
the denture and the dentist ends up grinding off
more acrylic than desired.
A quicker way to transfer the exact spot of the
soreness onto the denture is to put some paste
(eg.Dycal) on the soft tissue redness and then
trying on the denture. The Dycal will get
transferred onto the denture and you have the
exact spot of the soreness on the denture. |
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When its difficult to
convince a patient to get a diastema closure
done, its a good idea to do a 'mock-up' by using
your old composite and closing the diastema
without etching and priming and showing the
patient the results that can be achieved without
actually doing the procedure. This trick often
gets them to agree to do the cosmetic work. |
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Similarly, while doing a
composite filling where the final shade obtained
is critical, it is better to do the actual
filling and curing without etching and bonding
the tooth. Bulk of the material can be used to
save time rather than using incremental layers.
Once the desired shade is obtained the filling
can be removed and the actual bonding can be
done. This is a method to try out and get the
right shade through trial and error. The extra
material used and the time spent is very much
worth it to obtain the desired shade everytime. |
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A 13 yr old boy needs a
crown on a upper molar. The tooth height is
extremely less and this tooth has to be used as
an anchor tooth for orthodontics. How will you
modify the cutting to prevent the crown from
falling off due to inadequate tooth height and
continuous passive forces on the molar.
For teeth with short coronal height its best to
give 2 grooves (buccal and lingual walls) or 4
grooves on all 4 walls of the reduced tooth.The
grooves need to be parallel to each other and
slightly diverging out occlusally. This will give
excellent retention to the crown cemented. |
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