Orthotown October 2015 - (Page 8)

embrace progress // column Changes Galore Staying steady in the midst of technology and product shifts By Daniel Grob, DDS, MS, Editorial Director, Orthotown Magazine 8 OCTOBER 2015 // orthotown.com Technology and orthodontics Getting better Those of us who have been practicing orthodontics for a long time no doubt occasionally feel our heads are spinning from all of the innovations that have appeared over the past several years. The digital revolution started in the early 1980s with the emergence of the desktop computer, floppy disks and MS-DOS command prompts. Packaged as a calculator in a box, this early computer cost tens of thousands of dollars. Offices ponied up in order to more accurately count the money and-if they were truly adventurous- schedule patients. Imaging came later, with the various aids for tracing cephalometric X-rays and systematically overlapping them for superimposition purposes. Charlie Tweed, who was rumored to trace X-rays late into the night in the back of his Tucson, Arizona office, would be proud. (But knowing him, he would have spent the increase in his available free time to labor more in the profession he loved.) Digital X-rays were next, their adoption slow due to installation costs and the necessity of converting offices to new servers with advanced software. Many practitioners used work-arounds, including scanning film sensors into computer software. However, the overall adoption took time to catch on. I think it is safe to say that these days, no new offices are built or remodeled without installing cabling provisions in every nook and cranny to accommodate the present and the future of digital convergence. Aided by digital advances in other medical specialties, diagnosis of occlusion and temporomandibular disorders became a bit easier during the 1990s. (Notice I did not say that they were any easier to treat.) CAT scans and MRI allowed us to visualize the disc, or the lack thereof, and put to rest (for most of us) the cause of TMD. The problems remain, but recognizing that this dilemma is a medical and physicaltherapy issue allows us to focus on more concrete, specific treatment of the dentition. Articulation became the topic of discussion with the Rinchuse/Roth disagreements that spanned several years. There is still no clear-cut solution. More sophisticated diagnoses from the articulation, and advances in X-ray technology, led to more treatment and procedures. Various surgical procedures introduced in the early 20th century were perfected, and many new ones added with the advent of mini plates and screws. During this era, insurance helped defray the cost of these procedures, leading to rapid advances in the number and types of offered procedures. This golden era of surgery was shortlived, thanks to the restructuring of medical insurance plans that only included the procedures to a small degree, or wrote them out of major medical insurance plans altogether. The first truly disruptive technology that I can recall on the clinical side of orthodontics would be aligner therapy. Tracing its roots to digital technology, this therapy gives non-orthodontists the ability to completely Continued on p. 10 http://www.orthotown.com

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Orthotown October 2015

Orthotown.com Highlights
Embrace Progress: Changes Galore
Adhesive Message Boards
Offi ce Visit: It Takes Two
Virtual Treatment Planning: Reduce Frustration with the Right Sequence
High-Vaulted Palates
Poll
Air-Rotor Stripping Made Easy
The Real Value of an Interactive, Self-Ligating Bracket
Impacted Ur1
New Products
A Helping Hand
Class III Malocclusion Treated Non-Surgically with Invisalign, Mandibular Fixed Appliances and Mandibular TADs
Ad Index

Orthotown October 2015