Technology In Our Office

Full Commitment to Infection Control for Safe Care

For example, I designed the office in 1988 with Fully Autoclavable (Sterilizable) Handpieces. I committed to making Infection Control a Number One priority.

Computerization to Improve Patient Care

I started with computers in the 10th grade at Stuyvesant H.S. in 1966. I worked my way through Brooklyn College as the evening computer operator and helped to pay for dental school doing computerization of dental research. When the PC’s came out, I started using dBase II for tracking my patients and research at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center. When our billing clerk left the hospital, I revamped the dental billing system with Suzy Dental in 1984. We utilized the latest generation of that software as the cornerstone of our office’s dental computerization.

Computerized Digital Radiography

I took several Continuing Education courses in Computerized Dental Radiography before choosing the current system from Schick. I waited until many of the problems were resolved, and have received several upgrades, improving the software several times and replacing the sensors for improved image quality.

Cone Beam Computerized Tomography (CBCT)

After years of using CBCT's taken elsewhere, in 2018 we installed Sirona CBCT. We use CBCT studies to guide us for implant planning, diagnosis of dental and jaw pain, as well as evaluation of pathology in bone, which we may see in other 2D x-rays.

T-Scan® II: The Occlusal Analysis Solution

We have added the T-Scan III to our High Technology equipment to allow us to analyze better and adjust our patient’s bites when we detect or suspect problems! The degree of sophistication is unbelievable since we can now record in realtime the teeth contacts in 3-dimensions as you bite down and slide your teeth to the side or the front. We can then review the data looking at each contact every 0.01 seconds of the 3 to 10 seconds recording. The T-Scan is a grid-based sensor technology and occlusal analysis system that allows for a more natural, more accurate way to measure occlusal timing and force.

Caesy Patient Education

There are networked Caesy Enterprise setups in the waiting room and the operatories to allow you to view professional, narrated, informational video and slide shows on 112 topics in dentistry.

Isolite System

Experience a new level of comfort with the Isolite system. It allows you to relax and close gently on the soft clear rubber bite block. With its built-in fiber-optic light to illuminate the oral cavity, we can see things as never before, and the shadows are filled in. It incorporates suction to handle all of your oral fluids as well as the water and tooth/filling debris created during the dental treatment.

How Isolite Works

Illuminate

ISOLITE delivers crystal bright, 360 °, shadowless illumination of the oral cavity. Unlike conventional overhead lighting, ISOLITE broadcasts light from inside the patient’s mouth – providing a high intensity, bright-white, fiber optic light.

Isolates The Area We Work On

ISOLITE provides total dry field isolation with higher patient comfort. The mouthpiece, with its built-in bite block, provides tongue and cheek protection, which eliminates the need for cotton rolls, dry-angles or a rubber dam.

Aspirate

ISOLITE provides continuous elimination of debris and oral fluids. ISOLITE fully integrates aspiration with a 6-foot vacuum tube. The tube quickly attaches to your chairside, high-speed evacuator port.

What about Water Lines and Biofilms?

You may have read in newspapers and magazines that there is a potential hazard of the water quality in dental equipment. The problem arises because of the thin tubing and the low volume of water that is needed for the water spray for both the air/water syringe and the dental drill handpieces. Dental unit waterline contamination has been a controversial issue in dentistry, and various government agencies and the ADA have formulated standards for water line safety. We have been proactive, and all of our dental units are fit with DentaPure® DP365 water line systems that put a minute but adequate amount of iodine in the water to kill the biofilm bacteria for a full year. The FDA indication allows them to claim their system “Elutes 2-6 parts per million of iodine into the water in the dental water lines, which reduces biofilms and leaves effluent water at less than 200 cfu. Iodine ingested by patients is less than the minimum adult daily requirement for iodine. Iodine used is I2, which contains no allergenic proteins.

"DentaPure DP354 Water Filter" keeps the dental waterlines sterile

The 200 colony-forming units per cubic millimeter is the ADA standard that dental offices are supposed to meet. This system is certified for a full year, and at the considerable cost, a new filter is installed each year.

“White” Tooth-colored Fillings for Back Teeth

I have taken courses and reviewed much of the dental literature and spoken with other quality clinicians and recognized authorities before routinely using the newer tooth-colored composite restorative (filling) materials for the back teeth. I have seen too many of the earlier first, second, and third-generation composites fail. I waited until there was useful two-year clinical data in this country to back up the several years of testing and European data. More than 50 materials have been promoted and then discarded or vastly changed to meet the challenge of replacing silver amalgam.

We now have CEREC® 3D to fabricate all porcelain inlay, onlays, partial and complete porcelain crowns.

I am Cautious about Untested or Poorly Tested Materials

As another example, I am cautious about discussing the potential (unpredictable) serious side-effects of current bleaching technologies. There have been cases reported of severe gum recession (the bleaching peroxides change the protein on the surface of the teeth, and the gum recedes away from it) and severe root sensitivity to hot/cold/food/air, which sometimes has required a root canal. I think that my patients need to be informed of all available information before work is performed. I am glad that since 2014, we have used the low-sensitive, proven dental whiting system by Kor.

My Philosophy on Technology

The bottom line is that I offer the highest quality of Dental Care with State of the Art technology and materials, but I do not “experiment” on my patients with untested, or insufficiently tested materials. I leave testing to the manufacturers, the dental school researchers and those dentists willing to accept a higher rate of failure than I believe we need to.