tips and tricks

Grey cards are reference cards that are used to calibrate camera software. It ensures that pictures produced by the camera have colours that match the object being photographed. Many factors can affect the colour of the object, the camera sensor just captures the light reflected through the lens so mainly, factors that affect the light source affect the colour. For non dental photography, ambient lighting e.g flourescent lights, weather conditions etc can introduce colours that affect the object. In dental photography, due to the strong flash needed for illumination, most of these external factors are  inconsequential. This can be seen if you expose a photograph with the flash off, you should expect to see a black image due to the small aperture, low ISO and high shutter speed. This means that room lights shouldn't affect the image significantly. Potential flash factors that can affect object colour include: -The plastic cover in front of the flash can yellow with time due to degra...

 Recently my contract at the hospital dental clinic ended and I decided not to pursue renewal. This means I have ceased employment there and passed on my patient care and headaches to other clinicians. I have stayed on for a couple of days with the university clinics on a casual basis but I am not sure how long I will keep that up. It is not a bad job to have but I find it extremely tiring and I am learning very little from it. What I do learn is how to fix clinical mistakes and I am thinking quite a bit deeper about the 'why'  of how I do my dentistry. I have started a couple of days at another private practice and the practice owner seems keen to pass on his knowledge and experience on to me. This clinic does fairly high end dentistry, a fair bit of fixed prosthodontics, implants and ortho. One big bonus is they have an on site lab and a digital setup which is a big gap in my knowledge as I have only worked analogue in the past.  Working 3 jobs has been working fine for...

 I have previously heard about vertical crown preparations and have watched some lectures on them but today I had a go for the first time to prepare a tooth with a vertical margin. Essentially a vertical preparation lacks a horizontal margin and therefore there is no defined stop for the prosthesis at the margin. The fit of the crown works on a slip principle where there is close adaptation of the crown and the tooth preparation. When there is shrinkage of the porcelain at the margins, a horizontal margin will have marginal discrepancies whereas a vertical preparation crown will just shrink higher up on the vertical margin and the seal will not be compromised. I have heard of a few methods to prepare the margin but was recommended to use the 9904 014 40 fluted needle flame tungsten carbide finishing bur for the subgingival vertical preparation. The smoothness of the bur provides a smooth surface and helps to avoid the bur digging into the tooth. A very light touch and wide sweeping...

 Recently I attended an anterior waxup course and photography course run by Szabi Hant, a technician from Perth who works with Tony Rontondo, a Brisbane based prosthodontist. Overall, I could tell he was a very knowledgeable and skilled technician but not the best lecturer and demonstrator. Over the two days, this manifested in different ways.  The hands on component of the waxup course were him waxing up 3 anterior teeth on a stone model projected in a screen for the class. I think there was a lot of muscle memory involved and he proceeded through the waxup with some explanation as to what he was doing and important things to look out for but not much explanation in terms of finer aspects. For example, I would have been good to get his take on how to handle and manipulate wax and some more theory on instrument choices and wax types. To be fair, he made a valid point that the hands on component was the most important aspect of the course and the bulk of the time was spent on t...