Dr. Bill’s 2014 Year in Review
Dr. Bill Thompson | January 6, 2015
2014 a Year of Change
As I look back on the year in review, I marvel at incredible changes in the science and technology that mankind has achieved. Technology has enabled us to land a spacecraft on the surface of a comet traveling as fast as 81,000 mph, medical science is using a person’s own T-cells to eliminate cancer from their bodies, we now have computers the size of watches and we have tablet computers that rival some mainframe computers from 10 years ago in computing power.
On a level closer to home, the technology on the 2015 rental car that I recently drove, had many safety features that my 3 year old car of the same make does not. The newer car not only had the back up camera system which mine doesn’t, but alerting features for wandering out of the traffic lane, alerts for stopped traffic ahead and for traffic in the car’s blind spot. Other features included key-less ignition, and an incredible sound system with satellite radio and Bluetooth hookup. The advancements of the future will include cars that drive themselves. These are advancements that can really make a difference in our daily safety and comfort in traveling.
At Grandview Dental Care, we have always made it a priority to have the technology to provide the best in dental care for our patients. For example, we invested in digital x-ray technology a while back because it was the best for our patients and for the environment. Sure, it was expensive and film based x-ray systems are safe, but the digital x-ray system exposes our patents to 6 times less radiation; so why wouldn’t we use it?
In 2014, we purchased a 3 dimensional x-ray scanner and a 3 dimensional optical scanner for the practice. The x-ray scanner allows us to pinpoint locations of infections and problems within the jaws and it enables us to precisely plan for locations of dental implants that we place for our patients. This precision benefits the patient because we can see and therefore avoid critical structures live nerves and sinuses. The optical scanner is a video camera that converts images to digital models of teeth so that we can prepare and place precision crowns in about two hours which means our patients do not need a temporary crown and do not need to come back on a different day for us to place the crown.
Recently, one of our hygienists related to me a comment one of our patients, a professor, made to her. He stated “you people are just a typical neighborhood dental office, nothing special”. I couldn’t disagree more, in fact one of our equipment specialists recently commented to me that he would like to use our office as a model office for his other clients, that we are in the top one percent of offices nationwide in terms of the technology we have and services we provide. For example, with the 3-d x-ray scanner that have, we can precisely plan an implant placement digitally, have a surgical guide fabricated that enables us to place the implant within a 0.1 mm accuracy, and later, with the optical 3-D scanner, make a high strength precision crown for the implant and seat it in the office. This is not something that a typical neighborhood dental office does, but we do because our patients like having everything done by us without the need to go to a dental specialist.
This technology is in addition to all the other services we provide. We provide top notch preventive and dental hygiene services with our excellent hygienists, always excellent esthetic(they look like a natural tooth) crowns, veneers, filings and dentures; and we have been a Premier Provider for invisalign orthodontics for many years. We can also do these procedures under IV Sedation for those patients that are anxious about visiting the dentist.
On another topic, I have been reminded recently of how special each and every one of our team members is. We all take pride in providing the best services that we can for our patients, but I have seen how supporting and caring we are of each other. In the past thirty days, team members have lost six close family members, and the outpouring of sympathy and support has been amazing and gratifying. As one team member said, “hold your loved ones even closer to you tonight”.
As always, we are grateful for our wonderful patients,for whom we will always strive to provide the very best .
Thank you from Dr. Bill , and everyone at Grandview Dental Care.