There is still some work to be done on my significant character flaws as it turns out, which are often highlighted by my more and more rare journeys into the world of Facebook.
Yesterday I walked the dog and checked Facebook for my once or twice a day look (why I continue to do this I have no idea!)
I check in on Facebook through safari on an iPhone, I don't want the app because i'd just use it too much. I almost never look at it on any other device and the fact that I have to use safari to look at it almost stops me doing it more and more. On this occasion I saw someone post some exceptional work related to digital dentistry using an innovative technique that we have pioneered aspects of in the UK. I suppose I have been remiss in pushing out pictures of what we've done or publishing things we're doing because I wanted a longer run at it to make sure we'd got it right before we started to tell people about it but there, right in front of my face, was somebody publishing the thing that we do (it doesn't matter specifically what it is)
The point is that the red mist comes down, the ego wells up and arrogance steps to the front. I was mad. Mad at myself for not pushing stuff earlier, mad at the person that had done it for doing it fantastically well, mad at the system i've created which makes me so busy with so many things that I couldn't focus on that thing entirely, despite the fact that even if I had it would have been detrimental to everything else. It takes me a while to step back, take a breath and realise this is protectionism, ego and arrogance.
It was a fantastic piece of clinical dentistry. It was a straightforward dental implant placement with a provisional crown on a Tibase abutment creating an amazing emergence profile and a lower right molar which then allowed a digital CEREC crown on a Tibase abutment to be used to reconstruct with the best emergence profile and appearance you're likely to see from a molar. It was beautiful and exceptional.
We're now doing this routinely in the practice, going one step further and milling a digital provisional crown at the time of surgery but we're not publishing it yet; I wanted to get ten cases done properly (one of whom is my wife) to make sure the system works before we suggest other people do it.
I need to flip this though - if more than one of us are doing this it means it works. It means it's better for patients in the longer term. It means the systems that some of us are working on in digital dentistry are definitely the future of what will come next and will raise the game of implant dentistry from all the clinicians providing it.
Still some work to be done on my character though. Still some major self reflections required.
Blog Post Number: 1160
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