Bonding = Growing your practice

CPD Outcomes: A, C

The ability to bond restorations to teeth, rather than cutting them to achieve retention, has developed immeasurably in recent decades. As a result, there are adhesive solutions to many common restorative challenges. For example, in contemporary dental practice, we now use minimal cavity designs for what previously would have been a large, conventional class II cavity, we can treat tooth wear conservatively when we crowned worn teeth in the past (to protect them!!), in some situations we can repair fractured teeth with the lost tooth fragment and we can repair broken crowns with clever adhesive technology.   

This presentation will therefore include a brief history of dentine bonding from the past to the present Universal Bonding Agents and will include examples of the use of such materials in adhesive solutions from the presenter’s own clinical practice. It will also attempt to dispel some dental myths, such as the need to always place a liner/base or remove every last speck of caries.

But, how can that grow a practice?  By advising patients that we will not cut their teeth until it is absolutely necessary, and then use the minimal amount of tooth preparation by using modern adhesive technology.  Patients will not know that this is our philosophy unless we tell them!  And, once they understand, they will entrust their mouths to you for life.

The same applies to prevention, which when carried out successfully, is another form of minimal intervention. In this regard, this presentation is kindly supported by Oral B.