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It was the 13^th March 2018 at about 12:45 when Mark (our digital technician extraordinaire) dropped a 3D printed mandible for a patient who is having surgery in the next couple weeks into my hands.

It was rubbish.

The process that we’ve been working on for months, in amongst the rest of the things we’re doing, hadn’t turned out exactly how we thought it would on its first attempt.

I think that’s how innovation is supposed to work.

It didn’t mean it wasn’t exciting though and it didn’t mean we weren’t giddy like little boys amazed at what was in front of us and by the possibilities of what we could do next.

Other people have been printing jaws for a while but not many dental practices I don’t think.

We had one in the practice for a zygomatic case a little while ago to allow the visualisation of the surgery. When I saw that I realised the fantastic opportunity that brings both in patient visualisation and education and surgical visualisation and planning.

The beauty is that you don’t have to store them afterwards, you can just chuck them in the bin because the digital store allows you to print it again any time you want.

You need a printer that can print quickly and predictably, that was the biggest hold up in bringing this into the practice.

What I didn’t need was a £100,000 3D printer to print mandibles for fun.

What I have now is an affordable printer that can print mandibles in minutes.

This is where we sit in our development of digital dentistry.

We can do the full thing from front to back, from planning to restoration, but it’s the surgical side and the surgical planning that we will have the most fun and produce the most invention.

Next up at IDS in Cologne will be chairside printers that can print a surgical guide in 8 minutes!

These days are really exciting but they’re really really complicated.

Guided surgery and the explosion of that subject didn’t simplify implant dentistry, it complicated it.

We need to get together regularly to talk about this stuff because, used properly, it can transform patient experiences and outcomes. Used recklessly, its disastrous.

How are you training in digital dentistry, on Facebook?

Good luck with that.

Blog post number: 1587