Are You Taking Enough Intraoral Photos? Why They're Essential to Your Practice

You're listening to The Dr. Phil Klein Dental Podcast from Viva Learning.com. Thanks for joining us on the show. I'm Dr. Phil Klein. Today we'll be discussing fixed focal intraoral cameras and the added value to your practice. Our guest is Dr. Chad Duplantis, a practicing dentist in Fort Worth, Texas, who focuses on aesthetic and restorative dentistry. Dr. Duplantis is an author, lecturer, and popular speaker on the topics of restorative and aesthetic dentistry. Dr. Duplantis, it's a pleasure to have you on Dental Talk. Well, Phil, it's always a pleasure to be here with you. Yeah, and thanks for all your contributions along the way, because you've been doing a lot of stuff with Viva Learning, webinars and podcasts, and they're getting great attendance. And your insight in restorative and aesthetic dentistry has been a great, great contribution to our audience. So we really thank you for that. This is an important topic. And, you know, I say that about a lot of podcasts, but case acceptance, I know, is related to photography. Now we're going to be talking about the use of an intraoral camera. To begin this podcast, let me ask you this question. Do we really need to have an intraoral camera in our dental practice? Because years ago, they didn't exist and we all survived. And if we do need one, if you feel we do need one, if you could identify the important value adds to our practice. Yeah. So, you know, it's funny that you asked that. I think that we don't just need one intraoral camera. We need an intraoral camera in almost every operatory that we have. It's just, it's such, you know, like you said, a value add. There's so many. things that an intraoral camera does for us. But, you know, going back, I think it was in the seventies, there was a paper on, you know, a psychology paper and it was written by a Douglas Nelson. And he stated that 65% of the information that's presented visually is retained, whereas only 10% of the information that's presented orally is, is retained by. by patients or by people. And so with that being said, it's really important that we present, you know, our findings visually to the patients. And, you know, that's always been really important to me. I was always a visual learner and I realized that patients really are too, you know, when they see something, they're more inclined to act upon it versus being just told something. Obviously the answer is yes, we need intraoral cameras. And when was the first intraoral camera introduced into the profession where it became mainstream? Oh my gosh, you're going to catch me lying here because I can honestly say if that's trivia, I lost. But I would say probably somewhere in the 80s. You know, when I started practicing in 99, the office that I... offices that i went into it was you were a really cutting-edge practice if you had some sort of intraoral imaging device they were huge they were clunky uh they had you know a big uh you know like a cpu almost and then a wire connected to it they took up a lot of space in the operatory and so you know i'm gonna i'd have to guess you know 80s 90s but i may be way wrong on that but it's been around since i've been practicing how's that do you think that most dental offices have them now, and now it's a matter of which one to get or which one is the most reliable, gives you the best imagery, is affordable. What's the deciding factor here? Well, you know, I think that most offices probably have one, but do they use it to its maximum capabilities? And the answer is probably no for the majority of offices. They've come down so far in price. There's several great cameras on the market. Recently, Shofu introduced one called the iCam. It's extremely economically priced. It's affordable. And there's no reason not to have, you know, in our practice, we've got six ops. There's no reason not to have six of them. I mean, it's a fantastic camera. Give us a summary of the workflow of how you use that intraoral camera in your practice. I know you use it for new patients, existing patients, emergency patients, for instance. Tell us how you use it and how it helps you with everything that you do as far as treatment planning. Well, we use it both in the hygiene department and in the clinical department, you know, or the restorative department, if you will. But on a new patient exam, whether they have an extremely healthy dentition or they have dental problems, I want the hygienist to take numerous pictures, not just one, but numerous pictures. You know, because I always say that we can commend a patient on oral health and we don't necessarily shame them on oral disease. But we can show them disease as well. So it's great at capturing health and it's great at capturing disease or issues. That's on a new patient. Tons of pictures. On existing patients, you know, we'll take pictures if we're monitoring something or watching it over time or trying to show them changes in their dentition. But we'll also take pictures of problems that may arise. And then on the restorative side, you know, we'll take pictures that are great. to prove that we placed a buildup in the tooth, to show a patient a fracture in a tooth, to show the patient what we just did. I mean, oftentimes the patient says, you know, I'd like to see what you all are doing and we can't necessarily air it live. I'm sure some people can, but we take before and after pictures and sometimes during pictures, especially if we're removing a large filling to be able to show that patient the crack that's underneath it and the reason that it necessitates either a new filling or a crown or whatnot. I mean, there's just so many benefits of an intraoral camera. You obviously see an increase in case acceptance or even having the patient decide to do more treatment than they would otherwise do if they didn't see it visually. Absolutely. The pictures are so powerful. I mean, there's a lot of times where if you just leave a picture up on the screen, the patient's going to take a look at it and say, hey, tell me what that is. Or, you know, especially with older silver fillings and, you know, from where I practice, we're fairly conservative. But, you know, it's really nice to say, hey, that's an old silver filling that was done. really well and you don't need to have it replaced right now but we want to keep an eye on it or this is an old silver filling that some leakage around the margins you can tell that there's decay uh you know creeping underneath it this is something that we really need to replace and this is why and we share that image and discuss that image and educate that patient through those images as well any particular reason why you chose the eye cam from shofu well you know When you have cameras that range from, you know, a couple hundred dollars to several thousand dollars, and the image quality is really not that different. Yeah, of course, the more expensive ones may have a few more bells and whistles, but I want something that's just going to relay a great image to a patient. And, you know, this camera coming in at just under $300, it serves the purpose that I need, and I can have multiple ones so that our team is not fighting over a camera all day long. We have several at their disposal. that they can just grab and use at will and nobody's ever you know waiting on somebody else to take images there's always one available right so at this point in time with the technology being advanced as it is pricing has adjusted so that it's not a new gadget anymore, right? It's been around. And obviously Shofu has come out with a product that is very reliable and quality for the price. That's very enticing as far as if, especially if you want to put it in more than one operator, like you mentioned, we talked offline about this a little bit. You said you had a story to tell us. Yes. So, you know, as you know, I'm, I'm fairly involved on social media and I see, see things all the time. And, you know, one of my favorite stories was several years ago. There was a a doctor that posted some pictures or i'm sorry that did not post any pictures but they posted a story about a patient that came in they got their teeth cleaned they went home there was some stain still on their teeth the patient was was really upset the doctor explained that you know when this patient came in they had stain all over their teeth and we know that our hygiene department works expediously, but they may not be able to get 100% of the stain. Some of it may be buried. Some of it may require whitening. Some of it's just not going to come off. And so the patient called back and the patient wrote a horrible review and was just furious as to the way that their teeth looked when they left. And without shaming the doctor, my first question was, do you have any pictures before you started cleaning this patient's teeth? The doctor said, no, we didn't take any pictures throughout the entire appointment. Well, you know, there's no way that you can educate the patient as to the job that you did without any pictures. And not everybody's going to take pictures before they clean a patient's teeth. But, you know, it's a good practice to get into, especially on a new patient. And that way that you don't want to. shame the patient, but say, hey, you know, come take a look. We'd be happy to show you the pictures before we cleaned your teeth and the pictures. You can compare it to what it looked like afterwards. But there's a lot of times when a patient comes into our office with excessive stain on their teeth, we'll take pictures beforehand and then we'll take pictures after hand. And the patients are really impressed with the work that we've done. And, you know, hopefully we won't get one of those reviews or one of those blastings by a patient because we quote unquote didn't clean their teeth. Yeah, no, that's an important lesson to be learned right there. As far as integrating intraoral cameras into a practice, let's say a practice has some, they're not really happy with the quality or they're just older and they're not performing well and they're looking to buy new ones. They're in the state of replacing existing cameras or they don't have any to begin with. What should a dentist be looking for? What should a practice be looking for in an intraoral camera before they make that final purchase? You know, I think dentists are very, are very, uh, They want the best product for the best price. And, you know, nobody wants to spend more money than they have to. And, you know, my message would be that you don't have to buy the most expensive camera. As a matter of fact, you can buy one of the least expensive cameras and achieve the same results time after time again. I mean, you know, the image quality has increased. The price has decreased. And so you don't have to spend a lot of money. and you know the other thing is is that with cameras i think you want quantity you want something that takes a good image over and over again repeatedly but you want to have more than one camera so that you're never fighting over it and you never have an excuse not to use it and uh i think As we talked about before, the Shofu camera offers all of that. Final thing you want to look for is you want to look for what kind of warranty does it come with? What kind of product replacement clause does it come with in case those cameras do go down? I hear a lot of dentists say now that cameras are so cheap that they're disposable. And although that's great, I don't want to be throwing away technology right after I get it. So I want to make sure that I have a camera that's got a good warranty as well. Any of our listeners are interested in learning about it. visit the Shofu site and request information on that camera, and it's called the iCam. And we do want to thank Shofu as the sponsor of this podcast. They thought it was important for us to bring to light some of the benefits of using an intro camera, and they have more information on their website. Thank you very much, Dr. Duplantis. I appreciate the input. Anything else you want to add before we wrap it up? I think the only thing that I would add is that if you're not taking pictures, take pictures. And if you are taking pictures, take more pictures. Yeah, good advice. It's a lot of benefits. From someone that has quite a bit of experience in aesthetic dentistry, restorative dentistry. And as I said, keep up the great work, Dr. Duplantis. Thank you so much for your contributions. And we'll have you on soon enough so we can get more information about all the different topics of dentistry that our audience is looking for. Thanks again. Thanks, Phil.