The Campbell Academy Blog (4)

Filling the Gap (a riff about ridge preservation for dentists)

Another week, another course we're developing as part of The Campbell Academy course portfolio; this time, it is not business but clinical.

It's over two years since Rony Jung first came to do his master class, which now forms part of our year three course and which pretty much everybody who's done has said it's the best bit of CPD that they've ever done.

It runs again this year in July.

This time, Rony's course will be streamed live in part around the world, as Geistlich is really keen to provide this. So we'll capture a little bit of his hands-on, a little bit of his lecture, and a little bit of discussion and put it together in a program at the end of day one.

But one of the things that Rony presents, which was absolutely game-changing for us was the rationale and technique for ridge preservation (using the Geistlich model).

It was never something that I would have even considered, it was never a thing that I thought would help our practice and two years later or a bit more than two years later, we find ourselves using ridge preservation following extraction as an absolutely critical and essential part of our work, and it's changed the game and the quality of some of our results in an astonishing way.

I know this blog is for dentists, so if you're not a dentist, you can probably move along from reading it, but I want you to imagine taking out a lower premolar in a difficult site where the ridge is already quite narrow, and the patient wants an implant.

You know, when that comes back at six or eight weeks, it will be carnage, and you know, if you place it now, it won't be great because things will resorb, and the overall final result will be something that you'd rather not look at too often in 2 to 3 years from now.

Rridge preservation changes all of that; it protects all the anatomy so that when the patient returns to have the implant (albeit some months later), it's the easiest thing in the world because the architecture is all still in play.

This is not a complex technique; it's just a little bit of a complex decision to make.

To promise a patient that you can do things quickly is fine as long as the results you're going to get are something that you would be proud of but to do quick for quick sake, often (more often than not) results in a substandard performance especially in cases like the one I described.

This is not a technique for a specialist; it's a technique for a generalist.

It's something that you can add to your general practice portfolio when you're doing tooth extractions for a benefit to the patient, either if you send the implant to someone else or if you do it yourself.

It's a chargeable procedure when you explain to the patient the benefits of retaining their anatomy, and it's a lovely, wonderful surgical thing to do, a really beautiful addition to your skill set.

So much so has our practice adopted the technique that Beatriz Sanchez has been auditing it extensively and photographing it, and collecting dozens of cases to prove the point.

And so she has decided to provide a one-day ridge preservation course in September for anyone who might be interested in making the post ops of extractions for their patients better in the longer term.

It's supported by Geistlich, it's got all the hands-on elements you'll ever need, and you can just take it and get to the level we're at with ridge preservations really quickly.

There are 16 places.

It will be brilliant; I totally recommend it.

In the first Rony Jung course, Alex Jones and I sat at the back of the room together with our loupes on. We did the whole of the practical sessions over two days, and we brought it straight into our practice because it changed things.

Colin Barnes did the same.

Beatriz Sanchez did the same.

All the rest of the guys who were there did the same.

Hopefully, we will see you there, and it will be a cracking day.