Finally! It's Easy to Add Attachments to Removable Prosthetics

You're listening to the Dr. Phil Klein Dental Podcast from Viva Learning.com. Welcome to the show. I'm Dr. Phil Klein. Tell any practitioner that they need to pick up attachments in a denture and they start to sweat thinking about material flash, lock-ons, and placement errors. Today, we'll be discussing a safe and effective way to perform these procedures while eliminating the risks and problems we just mentioned. Our guest is Dr. Jeff Horowitz. owner and founder of Carolina Center for Advanced Dentistry, as well as advanced sleep and TMJ centers in the Myrtle Beach, South Carolina area. He is a lecturer and key opinion leader and is the co-founder of Dentists in the Know, a social media group focused on delivering honest, behind-the-scenes information to the dental community. Dr. Horowitz, it's a pleasure to have you back on the show. Phil, great to talk to you again. So we're going to be talking about a technique, a system. to add attachments to removable prosthetics today. So you use QuickUp. We talked offline about it, and you talked about how it's really best in class in its particular purpose. What makes QuickUp so different from other materials you have used to pick up attachments? And if you want to briefly talk about the procedure, that would be great. Yeah, yeah, I'd be happy to. So, you know, this is a product that I don't know how much airtime it gets, but... With the uptick in implants and implant-retained prostheses, we're finding that we're just having to do so many of these pickup procedures for attachments. And even for Old Crown and Bridge, where they had ERA or breed end attachments, whatever, we just find that this is something that we have to do a lot of. With that, it has always been something that has made us sweat. Because any dentist out there that has not locked on a denture, I promise there is nothing that will ruin your day in dentistry more than locking a prosthesis into a patient and having them get nervous and upset while you're trying to remove it. And so these things very often can be, we don't charge a whole lot for this procedure and yet they can be one of the most problematic procedures. And so, you know, that high risk or I guess low reward to high risk ratio is one of the reasons it's not such a fun procedure. But I started using this quick up material by Voco. And what was very different about it was that instead of kind of bulk filling the pickup material to grab your attachments, you didn't have to cut any vent holes into the prosthesis. And you put just a small enough amount just to grab onto the attachment. So you don't get a lot of flash. The cleanup is really easy. And then you come back with a really, really quick. Second step, where you take a light-cured material, the first material that goes in in QuickUp, goes through an automix syringe, but it is a self-cure, very, very quick, total of three and a half minutes set time. Typically with working time, it's about two and a half minutes in the mouth. You only put enough in just to grab the attachment, and then you come back and use this beautiful pink. flowable composite material, resin material, that fills in the rest of the gap and leaves you a highly polished surface so that finishing is real easy. And we're just not spending nearly the time that we were in having to do these pickup procedures. And we're not having to worry about it as much either. Anything that can take the stress out of a procedure is a winner. For those that didn't pick up the name, no pun intended, it's called QuickUp. Q-U-I-C-K-U-P. And you could look that product up on the internet or go to VOCO's website, and I'm sure there's videos on it. So are there any other clinical applications for QuickUp? Yeah. So funny you should ask that question, Phil, because... yesterday had an interesting experience. So as you know, we do a lot of work with sleep apnea therapy, TMJ appliances. So we do work a lot with removable appliances. And so just yesterday we had a sleep appliance that was not fitting tightly enough. And so very often we'll either come in and line it with some cold cure acrylic. And one of my assistants was in the room with the patient and walked away. And remember that little story I told you about locking things on? Well, she was a newer assistant, and she locked a sleep appliance in a patient. And the patient became very anxious. Very unhappy. And so it becomes much more than just a clinical issue. It really becomes a very emotional issue within the practice. She was crying. And of course, I reassured her. I told her, look, every dentist who has done enough of these has locked this on. So in other clinical applications, we actually decided to give. QuickUp a try in this application. When you have, say, an acrylic appliance, a night guard, something like that, you can apply the adhesive and put a little bit of either the light-cured or the self-cured, if it is not a clear acrylic, into the sleep appliance. And again, you just have much more control over the amount of material. And it's a little bit more forgiving in removal. So you don't have these lock-ons. So yeah, we're using it now for lining of sleep appliances and TMJ appliances as well. And it just so happens that a lot of the sleep appliances we make are pink. So it works out perfectly. Yeah, excellent application for the product. Just out of curiosity, a lot of dentists are getting more and more involved with sleep apnea. What's going on with that? Because when I was practicing dentistry, it wasn't even something that was even talked about in the GP office. How is this trend developing and how is it affecting the dental practice? You know, whether or not dentists are actively treating sleep apnea and making appliances. It's really becoming part of the curriculum now where if we're paying attention to the whole patient and not just the teeth, then we have to consider those things. We're all looking at those structures already. And much in the way that we can identify dysplastic tissue in the mouth, we can also identify very easily. a lot of the structures that can compromise the airway and very often it's the dentist who is able to catch these things in in the first place just during routine exams and and so the the other side of that phil is that especially if the patient is going to have any appreciable amount of work then we need to consider, is this a patient that's going to need to have some type of sleep apnea therapy? If they're grinding their teeth before we make them a night guard, we certainly better rule out sleep apnea because if we put a flat plane split in a patient with sleep apnea, we can actually make the apnea hypopnea index worse. So I know this isn't a talk about sleep, but what we're finding... that more and more of the things that we've been doing day in and day out really apply to sleep as well, or sleep has some impact on what we're doing as well. So just the fact that I can use this material in my sleep practice really makes it something I like having around. Oh, that's very interesting. So to wrap up this podcast, Dr. Horowitz, and we really enjoyed your insight on QuickUp, what is your favorite clinical characteristic of this product? So again, I'm really bad at narrowing things down to one, but it's clean, it's neat. So the time savings is immeasurable. I would say we've cut our pickup appointments in half. as far as time goes. But the most important thing, you know, and again, I go back to my assistants and how they feel about things as well. And we just don't get lock-ons. anymore. It's just a thing of the past. So it's reliable, it's neat, it's clean, it saves time. And I just haven't found another material on the market that can do what it's capable of. So if you're doing implants, if you're doing prosthetics around precision attachments, relining any kinds of appliances, I really would advise you to take a good look at this product. Yeah, really appreciate your insight. Dr. Horowitz, and I think I use the term lock in. I think it should be lock on, right? Yeah, yeah. You got to correct me when I make these mistakes. You don't care what it's called when it happens. You just want it out. I could imagine, and I haven't done any of these procedures, but I do want to use the right terminology or else I'm going to embarrass myself here if I haven't. No, I think we're all good. Okay, yeah. When I thought about doing this podcast, I said, okay, this is really going to be tough for me because... As a retired endodontist, I have not done a lot of these procedures, but we have your expertise and that's why you're doing the talking and I'm listening. Well, great interview. Thank you. Yeah. Thank you very much, Dr. Horowitz. For those of our listeners that are excited about what Dr. Horowitz has to offer, please tap into the podcast that he did called Reliable and Effective Cementation. It was excellent. And then he talked about what he defines as a truly universal composite. Does one actually exist? You can find that on VivaLearning.com, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, iHeartRadio, and all the other platforms that you want to listen to regarding your podcast. Thanks for listening, everybody. And Dr. Horowitz, hope to see you soon. Sure thing. Sounds good, Phil. Take care.