Digital photography & patient communication

See Pic­tures of YOUR Teeth to Under­stand What’s Wrong

In today’s world, when den­tal patients are increas­ingly savvy about den­tal care, but also increas­ingly wor­ried that they’re being taken advan­tage of, devel­op­ing the crit­i­cal trust between a patient and our team is occa­sion­ally dif­fi­cult.  This is where the power of dig­i­tal pho­tog­ra­phy is so evi­dent, and why I recently wrote about it on my pho­tog­ra­phy blog (http://​cdpayet​pho​tog​ra​phy​.word​press​.com), because com­mu­ni­ca­tion is so much eas­ier, and trust is so much eas­ier to estab­lish when you — the patient — see every­thing that we see.  That’s one of the rea­sons that we doc­u­ment our work so exten­sively with Canon Dig­i­tal Rebel XTi’s.  Of course, the other rea­son we do is because we are proud of our work and love to show off what we can do to serve you and help you keep your teeth for your life. 

Yes­ter­day was a per­fect exam­ple (although this patient has been with us for some time and we’ve already estab­lished that trust, plus she was hav­ing some pain).  This old sil­ver fill­ing had pro­vided many years of use for Mrs. X, but she was hav­ing off-and-on sore­ness and throb­bing and wanted it looked at.  When we took the pic­ture and showed her the tooth, it was easy for her to under­stand why it was both­er­ing her, as well as why we rec­om­mended a crown to save it; a root canal may well be needed, too, but we’re keep­ing our fin­gers crossed for her that she won’t.

Remem­ber my last post about cracked teeth?  Take a look at this tooth — SEVEN CRACKS!  No won­der it was hurt­ing.  It’s almost a mir­a­cle that the tooth had not split in 1/2, to be honest.

And this is how the tooth looked after we’d shaped it for a crown (which we’ll make with our CEREC CAD/CAM sys­tem); the crack extends well below the gum line and very deep into the tooth from both sides.

If you ever have ques­tions about the treat­ment that’s being rec­om­mended — ask to see pic­tures.  X-rays are often very inad­e­quate in diag­nos­ing these prob­lems.  The cracks that are so evi­dent here do NOT show up on x-rays; they’re too small.

Dig­i­tal den­tal pho­tog­ra­phy — the PATIENT’S friend.