tips and tricks

 I have been doing more stainless steel crowns this year. In fact, prior to 3 months ago I hadn't done one at all. We learned about them briefly during the pediatric dentistry lectures at university and I attended a course on stainless steel crowns and pulpotomies at ADAQ as a new graduate. However I was always put off from doing them, partly because of my percieved complexity of the procedure as well as my stubbornness to change the way I do things. I thought that because I had more experience with doing composite resin fillings, that would be the way to go. Actually, I have always found appointments with kids quite intimidating. I have done a fair few fillings on kids over the years, some successful and I am sure a lot unsuccessful. When undertaking procedures that intimidate us, we tend to hesitate from going all the way with the procedure. Essentially this means that things aren't done properly. I was afraid to give local anaesthetic to kids, so I was afraid to prep the car...

 I was going to make a post on caries detector dye because I find it to be such a useful aid during restorative procedures. Then I realised I had already made a post about in 2020. See below. https://dental-tidbits.blogspot.com/2020/09/a-note-on-caries-detector-dye.html  I pretty much agree with my thoughts on the previous post. At the time in 2020 I was using the dye fairly regularly as they had it at the public clinic I was at. I think my use dropped off as I transitioned to private practice and not every clinic I worked at had access to it. Now if I worked at a clinic without access to caries detector dye it would be something I would be requesting or purchasing myself.  Not that I need it to practice, no one needs it, but using it regularly will assist in consistency of your restorations. For proper adhesion to tooth structure, you must ensure that you are bonding to sound enamel and dentine. Therefore caries must be removed to an acceptable standard, clean margins ar...

For some reason, I had a long period of no denture cases coming in. For maybe 1-2 years I did a couple of fractured denture repairs but no new denture cases. Lately there have been some new ones coming in which have been enjoyable to work with. I thought I would make a post regarding modification vs remaking of dentures. Of course by modification I don't mean something simple like adjusting a denture sore spot, where we obviously wouldn't remake a denture, but for where there is a significant discrepancy between what the denture should be like and what it is like e.g changes to the fit or teeth. One common dilemma when a patient comes in with an old set of dentures is do we do nothing, do we try to improve the current denture, or do we start again and create a new set for the patient. My take on this is simple, if I can make an improvement to their current denture and this improvement will make a significant difference to the patient then it is justifiable to do something for t...