Dr. Larry Emmott discusses chairside CAD / CAM. He delves into the benefits and things to look out for when considering this large investment.
Hi, Dr. Larry Emmott here. I want to talk to you this morning about CAD/CAM dentistry. CAD/CAM have you heard that phrase? Of course, you have. What it stands for is computer aided design, computer aided manufacturing. What it means is making a crown or what we used to think of as a laboratory procedure in the office while you wait, but there’s a whole lot more to that because the first step of a CAD/CAM procedure is a digital impression, a digital impression, and when you understand that, that should be a big ah-ha because that literally changes everything we do.
Think about this, what’s the difference between an old-fashioned film photograph--you remember cameras with film back from the last century, you know, BC, before computer? What’s the difference between one of those film cameras and a digital camera? Well, of course, it’s obvious; with a digital camera you get the image instantaneously. There’s no sending it to the laboratory. If you make a mistake, out of focus, bad lighting, you know immediately. With an impression what happens? You don’t know if you got a good one. You have to send it to the laboratory. You got a tear or a bubble, you don’t know now, you find out later. It’s that digital impression which is the big ah-ha that makes it such a big deal.
Okay, so we got a digital impression. Now what? Well, really there’s two things that happen. You can either take my digital impression and just like an old-fashioned goo impression, I can send it to a laboratory, or I could take my digital impression and send it to a milling machine in my office. So, I can make a crown right now, while the patient waits. Now, with the CAD/CAM, with a milling unit, you make it in your office, there’s so many great things about that, no temporary. Now, I don’t know about you, but every now and then, I’d make a temporary, it’d come off. I know it’s never happened to you, but it happened to me. No second appointment. That’s huge. The patient doesn’t have to come back to the--back for another visit, take more time off work, get another babysitter, and you don’t have to pay the overhead for a second visit, but there are some things you can’t do with the milling machine. You can’t do a bridge. You really can’t. Even if you had a whole bunch of multiple units in the back, it gets complicated. You really don’t want to be doing critically significant veneers and stuff with the CAD/CAM machine. So, now what do you do? You send them to a laboratory. But, with the digital impression you can do both. I can take the ones that [unintelligible] and wait--while you wait and do them in my office, or I can send them to the laboratory for the bridges and the cosmetically critical restorations. Digital impressions are the key. CAD/CAM is just one step of that.
So, when you’re looking at these devices here’s what I want you to think about, how good is the impression? How easy is it to take? Am I limited with this impression? Can I only do it in the laboratory, or can I only do it with a milling machine? Because, ideally, you want to be able to do both, because that is where we’re going. I mean, that’s what the future is. The future’s digital. The future’s coming and it will be amazing.