On Thursday I had the chance to speak (briefly) to one of our year implant groups (cohort 1) and in these little fleeting moments when I get to pop into the Academy, we just talk about whatever is topical or current.
And so, I decided that we needed a little minute, as these guys are at the end of the course, to show them the pitfalls of Instagram dentistry.
And so, the picture associated with this blog is of a patient whose restorations were fitted this week.
This is the picture that I took to the kitchen after Andy had showed it to me (he fitted the restorations after I had provided some surgery) and I asked 5 dental professionals in the kitchen to tell me what the treatment plan was before I’d started.
It was fascinating watching people who work with this stuff all the time trying to decide whether the teeth were natural or not natural or whether they’d been restored or not.
On the course we then showed the pre-op photographs and also some intervening pictures of the work that had been done which makes the final result look even more impressive to me.
For the first time in my life, I feel like I’ve been associated with a case that looks like it’s world-class, and I suspect that Andy and I could ‘dine out’ on this for months or years to come.
On the same course though the delegates were providing live surgery and one of the cases suffered a reasonable intraoperative complication (which was totally resolved) but which painted a picture of what the real world of implant dentistry looks like
If you were a baseball player standing at the plate, there’s a chance that you could smash it out the park but there’s also a huge chance that you’ll miss it or foul it or be caught.
I could use this case to promote our courses for the rest of my life, but I’d rather tell an honest story of how difficult implant dentistry is and how important it is to assess patients properly and how crucial it is to sometimes say no and how absolutely vital it is, for so many reasons, to try to do the right thing each time instead of chasing the picture for Instagram.
Blog Post Number - 3235