Hi, this is Dr. Antolak from thegentledentist.com in Shelby Township Michigan. 586247-3500 is our phone number. And one thing I’ve been doing for years. Probably a good 12 to 15 years is taking digital photography on my patients. I think that’s one of the biggest tools that I have that I can use for communication. Our patients that get the opportunity to see the pictures of their own mouth on a computer so that they can be coming engaged in their own care. And they can also know exactly what’s happening. And therefore I don’t have to explain things; they can see it for themselves. It also adds for, success in being able to pass that information on and emailing it to our laboratories as we use them. And that way, we have a great communication using the digital aspect. We’ve been, I’ve been doing this since digital cameras were first around so it’s very exciting. So, what I wanted to do is just to demonstrate on Jackie. She works for Spyder Byte Media, who does our website in our videos, and she has agreed that I can go ahead and do this for her. And so what I’d like to do is just to demonstrate a few of the pictures that we take, why we take them. And then we’ll show you some images that come up afterwards.

So the first thing we want to do is, I’m going to have Jackie, she’s going to go ahead and show us, a picture with the lips at rest, and then it, with a full smile. What I do with that is, I’m able to then, determine the placement of her teeth in her mouth, if it seems to be pleasing, and what we can do about that.  So what we’re going to do is go ahead and do is, we’re going to go ahead and take some pictures first. So, if you can just relax your lips a little bit, slightly. Perfect, just like that, it’s good, and separate the, just slightly, good, good. It’s kind of bright, don’t want you to close your eyes.

Now, give me a big smile, good, and keep smiling and I’m just going to keep taking some pictures here. Good. Feel like you’re in the paparazzi, huh? Like you’re a very important person here. Okay, that’s great. So we did that, now the next part I’m going to do is I’m going to ask you to put these retractors in your mouth, yes, I know, they’re very odd looking. And so I’m going to have you put them in, and we’re just going to pull like this, and I’m going to let you hold it. So open up real big.  Good, now let me just place it in your mouth like this, and you can just hold that.  Good job, good job. Okay, go ahead and bite down all the way in your back teeth. And this is when it looks real special. Okay, open a little bit. Great. Now, keep that in for me, please. And now what I’m going to do here, is, I’m just going to dry, this is warming it up. So, people will, these are sterilized. And so, we’re going to go ahead and just go ahead and place this in your mouth like this. And go ahead and bite down for me. And now we’re just looking at your back teeth and how they come together. Open just a little bit. Good. We’re going to do the other side now. Good, and bit down again, all the way. Perfect, you’re doing great. I’m going to just do, there’s a little bit larger area here.

And this is going to get the biting surfaces of your teeth, and we’re going to look at that closely. And so go ahead and open up real wide for me. This is really kind of big, I know. Okay. But you’re doing great. Good, let me just get the other side now and then we’ll be done. The torture will be over. Okay, fantastic. Okay, you can take that out. Perfect, thank you so much. And so what we’re going to do now is we’re just going to put it into our, our computer here. And we’ll see what it looks like.  So this right now is showing some pictures of Jackie and she’s been so brave to let us do this. But so we can do then is we can take a look. So with Jackie she shows she’s got plenty of display on her teeth but she’s young. She had braces. She informed me she had braces and she’s considering having veneers done. So we’ll see how that goes down the road but right now you can see where the bracket was placed here, and there was a bracket placed here and. And it just got a little bit of decay and some staining around the edges of that. But now we can see with this picture is how her teeth look up close. But see, she can normally see those other pictures. This is what we call the party view, from the side. And so, this is the view that people don’t always have the ability to see for themselves when they do that. So, now it’s the other side. This is her left-hand. And this is her front. This is kind of the part we put those metal parts in there. What it does is, it gives us the ability, then, to see teeth all the way back, in, in all directions, okay. Now, if their bite. Teeth open, that’s what she’s got going on here. And now, we can look at what looks like at the side of the teeth, there and, we can see she does have some recession. We’ll talk about, they’re there, so there it is. So as soon, that they’re open a little bit, we can a lot of times find there, if there’s a lot of wear on the teeth. If people clench their teeth or grind their teeth, it’ll actually show patterns in these photos. This photo shows a lot of detail.

This is her upper arch. Should never ever had the chance to see this picture here. And if somebody has, she has nice teeth. But if someone’s had a lot of dentistry done before, that they have a problem, and they see something like that, then that just helps to inform them to make an educated decision on what they want for their own treatment.  So that shows the top. And these are the bottom teeth, and what the edges look like around the teeth there. So, I don’t think you have any fillings at all. So  she’s shaking her head no. She doesn’t. So, she’s one of the fortunate ones who don’t. This gives you some of the details. And actually, what we can do too is, is because of the high resolution that this camera has, we can get into very specific details of her teeth. Anyhow, you can see teeth just like what’s going on. So, the importance of that is just so that you know as a consumer what’s happening in your mouth. And we can create a detailed treatment plan based off of that. Pictures like this also help me to develop in more complex cases a treatment plan for them when I can’t just sit there and, and discuss that with them at that point in time. So they create a lot of value. Then give us a call at 586 247-3500. Thank you.

Macomb County Dentist Discusses the Importance of Dental Digital Photography