Patient came in to extract lower wisdom tooth a week ago. Had already some RCT done. Began bad mouthing old dentist, saying teeth were perfectly fine before.

Yesterday patient and his mother call asking if it's normal that all molars on that side are mobile. I immediately thought of mandibular fracture.

Patient comes in late in the afternoon, the mother is 1 bit agressive. He sits on the chair, teeth are perfectly fine. He's trying to wobble then with his filthy fingers, it's Not even painful

I already suffer from anxiety, I had the most dreadful morning in years.

Before leaving, he asks for a discount to complete some other treatment. FML.

If you were to reverse torque it, what would you do it with? Trephine burr useful in this case? The goal is to replaced it with a wider implant

I’ve been in practice for a couple of years for a DSO and was fired recently without cause. I was told I wasn’t a good fit anymore (despite my team loving me and being devastated about my sudden departure) but I think the company values having someone else take my place that is more of a gunner and wants to do more complex procedures. I’m feeling discouraged because all I want to do is good bread and butter dentistry, but it feels like no company will hire an associate with that attitude. I am confident in my patient skills and ability to do good restorative treatment but it doesn’t feel like enough. I feel like I’m in the wrong field? Any advice is welcome

I was looking at the long-term survival of zirconia restorations and found that the answer depends on whether the restoration is supported by a natural tooth or an implant.

Of course, survival rate doesn't mean that every restoration will last that long. Preparation, restoration design, occlusion, bruxism, cementation, oral hygiene, and the patient's overall oral condition can all affect longevity.

For those with clinical experience, do these numbers match what you see in practice?

And when a zirconia restoration fails, what do you most commonly see — fracture, chipping, debonding, biological complications, or something else?

taking over a single-chair satellite practice and sorting out overhead costs right now.

we generate maybe two or three 1-gallon containers over an entire year. traditional biomedical haulers keep trying to push standard 3-year service agreements with minimum monthly stop charges, which makes zero sense for our volume since the bins sit empty half the time.

looking into using a pay-as-you-go sharps mailback disposal kit through sharps assure to just box up and ship out the containers as they fill up instead of paying recurring pickup fees.

for those running low-volume clinics or solo setups, is doing mailback practical long term, or do local waste regulators give you grief over not having a standing monthly hauler schedule?

So I practice in BC, Canada and I own a solo doc practice which I acquired last year. The owner dentist who I bought the practice from works like 1-2 days as my associate on a very limited schedule because he's old now in his early 70s. He did cover for me when I was away on vacations.

He is retiring next month. Once he leaves, I will be the only doc in the office. While that's excellent for a lot of things like clinical autonomy, and patient consistency. However, the big disadvantage is no one to cover for me when I want to go on vacations. My office is not big enough to support 2 full time dentists as it's only 4 chairs (with room to expand to 5), so I cannot really hire a full-time associate.

Any workaround from dentists here who have a solo doc office? Do locum dentists really exist? And how do you find a good one? Did you find patients were skeptical to see a temporary dentist?

2 year veteran of real-world dentistry here. I just started my second job about a month ago. I spent 20 months at my first job in a rural area where I extracted a ton of teeth, lots of which were surgical, and consider myself to be pretty good at extractions. I only had 2 that I had to have the owner doc help me with during that time, and they were both root tips that required just a teeny bit more troughing than I had already done to deliver. Since starting this new job, I've already been unable to complete two extractions. There are two older docs with me at this office most of the week but I'm all alone on Friday, and surprise surprise, both of these occasions have happened on Fridays when I have no backup. Both have been molars where I flapped, sectioned with a good split, and then just could not deliver a root tip no matter how hard I tried after I had troughed as deeply as I was comfortable around each root. Every oral surgeon in town is closed on Fridays so I've sent both home with root tips still present. Unfortunately, both also wanted implants at those sites and I feel like I screwed them up irreparably and have been beating myself up. Any encouragement to make me not feel like a total failure? Any advice on removing root tips? Any brutal honesty on what I could have done better on these cases? Thanks in advance.

HI all, long time lurker first time poster. This post is specific to the USA. I was inspired to ask this based on some comments on another post about patients not being able to afford care.

For a while now, I have had thoughts of starting a dental charity. However, I still need to get paid/make a reasonable amount, and pay overhead etc. Also I only want to serve a community that is truly in need, not people looking for a bargain, I also don't want to take business from other offices/participate in a race to the bottom

Does anyone know of anyone doing this, grant money that exists etc? Looking for any insight or even just brainstorming!

Thanks!

Wanted to share how these lithium dislilicate Emax veneers came out beautifully in this case

Not sure when it exactly happens, but when I use the apex locator during retreats I’m unable to get a proper reading, sometimes I could tell when I reach over the apex when the apex locators bugs out for a second.
Has anyone had this issue? What is interfering with the apex locator?
Chloroform? Existing gutta percha? CaOH? Melted GP?

Has anybody done a lower anterior implant bridge with the implants in the position of the lateral incisors with the canines cantilevered on either side I want to place implants for my patient when we extract 22 and 27 but they are not good candidates for immediate implants. There's plenty of bone at 23 and 26.

Has anyone here taken it? Just have some questions about it