Dental technicians are now professional!!

You may be surprised to here that up until VERY recently the people that made your veneers, crowns, bridges and dentures did not have to register with anyone or even have any form of official training!

This has been a sorry situation for many years and has served to keep the profession of Dental Technology a lowly one.

From a few months ago technicians can register with the General Dental Council (GDC) this is the regualtory body that serves to ensure that patient care is upheld; all dentists register with the GDC. Now that technicians can register with the GDC it gives us equal status with dentists.

So what does this mean to the average person on the street?

1. All technicians will now have to be qualified...you will be assured that the person making your new teeth knows what they are doing.
2. You may see new clinics opening up that are run by technicians! As a GDC registrant technicians can now employ a dentist...if technicians can be more involved with the patient during their course of treatment you may get a better quality service. Look out for these clinics opening up soon!
3. You will be able to check if your technician is registered by searching the GDC database. I recommend asking your dentist for the technician's name that they used and checking yourself.

I hope this has been of use to you.

Please visit again soon,

Mark

Why is dentistry so expensive?

We get asked this question a lot, and in real terms yes it is expensive. But what about in relative terms?

A bit of background first, I run a dental laboratory, we make crowns, bridges, veneers etc. A dentist decides on the course of treament for you, he cuts the tooth down and takes an impression, this is then sent to me. I then make a mould of your mouth from the impression and make the restoration on this mould. It is then all sent back to the dentist for fitting. A dentist is my customer, but to me, you the patient are the consumer. Although I charge all my customers the same price, they each have their own pricing scale and charge the consumer, you, varyig amounts.

I would say that an average crown from one of my dentists would be approximately £700. Sounds a lot, £700 per tooth. If you needed 6 front teeth treated with crowns that would be £4,200!!

But wait...what else could you buy for £4,200 that will be used 24hours a day (many people grind their teeth a little at night), for 15 years, that is on permanent show and says something about the way you look?

I would say not many things; even a car would not last that long, under those conditions!

So all in all I think the RELATIVE cost of dentistry is good value, and worth spending money on. YOU GET WHAT YOU PAY FOR!

A crown that costs £100-£200 (from a dentist) will not be the highest quality, no matter what you are told! I will make about 6 crowns a day to a high standard, if you pay £100 for a crown the laboratory technician that made it is likely to be making 20-30 crowns in a day...I will leave you to draw your own conclusions!

If you wish to find a good dentist then visit our website www.changemysmile.co.uk on the 'new smile' page fill in the form and you will recieve a list of dentists that are able to help you. My personal contact details are there too and I am always willign to speak with anyone who needs help.

Please visit this page again soon, why not book mark it for future reference.

Thanks,

Mark

busy, busy,. busy

Hi,

If you have visited here from our changemysmile website WELCOME. The site has now had many many hits and is proving to be a great success! All the dentists listed are of a good quality and use a premier london laboratory to have their cases made for them (veneers, crowns etc are made in a dental laboratory).


This week has been mad, mad, mad. Lots of work and not enough time to do it in!!

We are getting so many referals from satisfied customers, all good of course, but it does make it hard work sometimes!

The article here is from a supplier that I act as an opinion leader for. They have a new crown, InVizion which is becoming very popular. It is as strong as metal, but is made of zirconia and is therefore metal free. To date we have made about 60 of these crowns with great success. If you want more details please check out my laboratory website and give me a call. There is a group of laboratories - Inlab Vizion Group - that I am the coordinator of that make these crowns.


Anyway, enough for today....see you soon.

Mark

Hi,

If you have visited here from our changemysmile website WELCOME. The site has now had many many hits and is proving to be a great success! All the dentists listed are of a good quality and use a premier london laboratory to have their cases made for them (veneers, crowns etc are made in a dental laboratory).

This week has been mad, mad, mad. Lots of work and not enough time to do it in!!

We are getting so many referals from satisfied customers, all good of course, but it does make it hard work sometimes!

ANyway, enough for today....see you soon.

Mark

Colour

OK, we've covered the golden proportion, now let's look at colour. If you have natural teeth look at the colour of your canine (eye tooth) to the rest of your teeth...in most cases it will be darker.

The image here shows this, it is often subtle but they ARE darker.

This is natural and I would recommend considering having your new teeth follow this convention, if we make all teeth the same colour they can start to look monotone and a little un-natural. Even 1/2 a shade is enough to give a really nice natural look, but still keep lovely white sparkling teeth.

Teeth are also a different colour within themselves, they are slightly warmer towards the gum where the enamel is thinner and a little more translucent towards the tip where the enamel is thicker. I often get asked to make teeth all the same colour...again this has the tendency to make them look un-natural.

So there you are, when you go for a new smile at least bear this in mind when you decide what colour to go for!!

Our website www.changemysmile.co.uk could help you find a dentist that can help with your new smile.







Who links to me?

The Golden Proportion in your smile

Ok, lets start by looking at the relationship of teeth to teeth. If you have read 'The Da Vinci Code' then you will know all about the Fibonacci series or 'Golden Proportion'. This is a series of numbers that have a unique relationship to one another. The series is 1,1,2,3,5,8,13,21,33... the next number is the sum of the 2 before.

What is the signifcance of this then? The proportion of one number to the next is always 0.68 or 1.68, this is the golden propotion or golden ratio. Everything we see that looks good relates to this number - designers use the golden raton...becasue things look good that way!. Check out these images from www.goldenmeanguage.co.uk.

The proportion between the calipers is 0.68 or 1.68, even nature adheres to this number...

Pretty amazing stuff! If we don't copy this golden ratio with teeth THEY WILL NOT LOOK RIGHT! The second tooth from the front is taken as a ratio of 1, (looking from the front) the front tooth is 1.68 this width and the eye tooth or canine is 0.68 this width, measure the image at the top of this page.

It is crucial that the person designing your new smile appreciates this in order to achieve the best result. AT SBO Dental Laboratory we have many years experience in designing smiles - please visit our website at www.changemysmile.co.uk for more information on how to give your self a new smile.

Please visit again soon for the next mini lesson in smile design.

Bue for now,

Mark Oborn

I am amazed at how many lectures and articles I have been asked to do recently. My presentation to the Association of Dental Implantologists in Cardif is coming up soon and I was asked yesterday to provide article for 'Irish Dentistry'. It's all good, but a bit time consuming!!

Here is a picture of me 'mid flight' talking about smile design.

Cosmetic dentistry is an art...oh yes, and throughout the next few blogs I will attempt to unravel it slightly, we'll look at form, shape, colour, tooth relationships, golden proportions plus a few others.

If you have vistited here from our parent site www.changemysmile.co.uk it is good to welcome you to my blog, and I hope you will visit again over the next few days to see how we start to design smiles, please feel free to post coments as we go along. Bye for now , Mark

Cosmetic Dentistry Study Day

Well, the day was a great success. Panadent (a UK leader in dental supplies) asked me to be an 'opinion leader' on their stand. The images here show Sonia from FMC taking a shade using the Vita Easy shade digital shade taking devise . This device measures the colour of a tooth so I can accurately match to it.

It is good to be asked on tho this kind of stand and great to be thought of as an 'opinion leader'!!









Hey Dominique, now you're on the internet!!



This was a great series of lectures and I am really glad I attended, I learnt a lot and am now fired up to put it all in to practice on the new smiles I create this week.