1-Visit Porcelain Veneer
Linda came in to our office today with 1 serious issue: a broken porcelain dental veneer on her upper right lateral incisor (second from the middle). Naturally, since she’d been through the process of getting veneers done previously, she was expecting that she would leave with a temporary (aka provisional) veneer after we’d taken a mold of the tooth, and she’d have to come back in a few weeks to have the real one bonded in. However, she was pleasantly surprised by the end of her appointment today, because thanks to the CEREC AC Bluecam, we were able to make a brand-new porcelain veneer in just ONE visit! No second appointment to bond the veneer in, no temporary veneer, no tooth molds, no second time getting numb……..NONE of that! So judge for yourself…..how did we do?
If you are looking to transform or fix your smile, and convenience is important to you, then give us a call at 704-364-7069 or
Oh yeah…….almost forgot to mention, too….since Linda signed up with our Quality Dental Plan, she saved 20% on her work today!
Fun Fun Fun! Single-visit porcelain crowns with CEREC 3D!
OK, I know that most people don’t think that going to the dentist is fun, but it sure can be a lot more interesting than it used to be for sure. The advent of digital dentistry, particularly CAD/CAM dentistry that allows us to make all-porcelain crowns in just 1 visit, is just pretty darn cool, and that’s even according to my patients who’ve benefited from it. We brought the CEREC 3D system into our office at the end of December 2007, and in that time we’re approaching our 200th CEREC crown. In the beginning, I didn’t take many pictures because I was really concentrating on learning how to make the crowns beautiful, fit well, and happen smoothly and quickly. Now that we’ve become more comfortable with the technology, I’m taking the time to really take quality photos to show off just what we can do, and yesterday just was the perfect opportunity.
This gentleman had these porcelain-to-metal crowns placed about 4-5 years ago, but he is a major grinder and started breaking the porcelain off within a year. That’s one of the potential problems of adding porcelain on to metal like that. They obviously needed to be replaced, and he drove all the way from Asheville, NC for us to do this in 1 appointment; since we clearly needed very strong porcelain, we chose EMAX, which has truly remarkable strength. Take a look and see the results for yourself after the crowns were glazed in our oven:
Yes – single-visit crowns can be beautiful!
Obviously, the single biggest advantage for patients with our CEREC machine is the ability to have beautiful, all-porcelain restorations completed in a single visit. Here’s an example of how nice that can be. This patient had 10 porcelain veneers done about 2 years ago; due to her grinding habit, she had knocked off and broken one of the veneers. Rather than make a yucky impression and send it to the lab, while she had to wait several weeks with a temporary veneer, we made it right in the office. One visit porcelain veneer, no temporary, no second visit, and her smile was back to beautiful! See if you can guess which one was done by us on CEREC and which were done by the lab?
A Beautiful 1-Visit Porcelain Veneer by Dr. Payet in Charlotte, NC
If need your any tooth fixed, not just if it’s a porcelain veneer, CEREC CAD/CAM can do it for you. Call our office 704-364-7069 or Request an Appointment Online.
Learn more about CEREC CAD/CAM single-visit porcelain crowns
The CEREC CAD/CAM system, as I described in a recent post, is a truly exciting trend in dentistry, and it sure looks like it is becoming the wave of the future. Of course, you don’t have to wait for the future to take advantage of it……all you have to do right now is call 704-364-7069 and request an appointment.
It’s not quite as easy to just describe the technology, though, if you haven’t seen it or are not familiar with the concept. But take a look at this website to see stories of everyday patients who’ve benefitted from this great technology.
An exciting future for digital dentistry
Tonight was the first meeting of 2009 for the Charlotte, NC area CEREC Study Club, which I founded shortly after I took possession of my CEREC 3D CAD/CAM system on December 31st, 2007. (If you’re unfamiliar with the terms, CAD/CAM means “Computer-Aided Design/Computer-Aided Milling.”) It was really a very exciting meeting (ok, most people probably wouldn’t find it really exciting, but we’re a bunch of dentists, after all, who happen to be kind of geeky and like hi-tech tools in our office which happen to provide really awesome results for our patients), as the manufacturer (Sirona USA) just recently released a tremendous new upgrade, the CEREC AC Bluecam, which uses a range of improvements in both hardware and software to drastically increase the system’s speed.
Given the cost of the new unit, and since my CEREC 3D is only 13 months old, I’m not going to be introducing this new version to our office this year. The one we have, the CEREC 3D, is still an excellent system, and we regularly enjoy giving our patients the great experience of single-visit all-ceramic crowns and onlays with it. This means no temporary restorations, no second visit getting numb, no metal, practically no sensitivity afterwards……there’s really no downside.
Along with the new system, Sirona USA is launching another terrific innovation that will also benefit patients, and it’s called CerecConnect. The difference is this: with CEREC, we can create 1-4 units of crowns and/or onlays in a row fairly easily, and even do all of them in 1 visit. However, doing a full arch (all the top or all the bottom teeth) is extremely difficult and typically requires great expertise and advanced training, and it will still usually take 2 visits. In addition, the regular CEREC can’t do things like bridges. With CerecConnect, however, we will still be able to completely eliminate using those gunky impressions that NOONE likes, because we’ll take a digital image of the teeth and then just email it to the lab. How cool is that!?!?
I have a number of recent cases that I plan on posting here in the near future once I get the patient education videos completed. You’ll love what CAD/CAM can do in dentistry, for YOU! The digitization of dentistry is proceeding full-speed ahead, and the benefits are simply tremendous.
New Patient Education videos now in the office!
Oh, it feels so good to finally be able to announce this, as I’ve been working on it so hard for so many nights after my family has gone to bed, but FINALLY I have begun producing some new Patient Education videos to help explain a number of options that we offer by using pictures of many similar cases.
Over the last 4 years, I have amassed a catalog of about 38,000 digital photographs of the work that we do. You can see my Photography Blog post on the subject of Patient Communication with Digital Photography for more info on how/why we take pictures of our work, but now I’m finally able to turn a lot of those photos into various video formats to highlight problems that many patients have, often without even realizing it, and to let our patients actually see what they can expect once the treatment is completed. It’s really quite exciting! We’re not talking about “stock” photography here, of work that someone else did. EVERY SINGLE ONE of the pictures that you’ll see were taken by Dr. Payet (me), and every completed procedure was performed by Dr. Payet (me) and my Team. (Hope you don’t mind me talking about myself in the 3rd person for a moment there; I was having a Bob Dole flashback after reading some political articles. 🙂
We’ll look forward to showing you these new videos when you come in!
Don’t have any of those videos in Web format quite yet, but keep an eye on our website, Smiles by Payet Dentistry, for them to begin appearing there within the next few weeks. You’ll be able to see and understand so much more easily, I promise!
Digital photography & patient communication
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://cdpayetphotography.wordpress.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.
Single-visit, all-ceramic crowns with CEREC CAD/CAM
Another exciting technology that we offer is the CEREC CAD/CAM system. Very simply put, with CEREC we are able to design, mill, glaze, custom-stain, and bond an all-ceramic crown or onlay IN JUST ONE VISIT. That’s right – no temporary crown or onlay, no second appointment to get numb, no worries about the temporary falling out. When you come in, you need the crown done, and when you leave — it’s DONE. Finito. Finished. Complete……….you get the idea. 😉
Sylvia’s case this morning, an old silver filling that had cracks in the tooth around it, new decay forming at the edges, and discomfort when biting, meaning the tooth was truly starting to crack and might have broken apart.
Our new website is live!
It’s been a long time coming – a much needed makeover for the Smiles by Payet website. Thanks to Marie McClaflin of Arc Brand Marketing, we took what was still most useful from the old site, updated the info on our outstanding Team (portraits of each will be online soon, too), added better ways to contact us (we now have email addresses for each individual Team Member), and soon we’ll be adding new info on our CEREC CAD/CAM system, the Zeiss PICO dental operating microscope, and plenty more links to really useful and informational websites on many dental topics.
In the near future we also plan on adding video testimonials from a number of patients who’ve benefitted from the NTI-tss, the only FDA-approved and non-medication treatment for Migraine and Chronic Tension Headaches (I’ll be posting more on this soon), as well as some short video introductions for myself and our Team Members – Rosie Bonnett, Kerri Rucker, Marie Whittington, and Kim Pleasants.
We also have a number of recent Smile Makeovers and Short-Term Adult Ortho cases that will showcase just how dramatic a change can be achieved by either of these techniques, as well as some new examples of Deep Bleaching (you will be amazed, I promise!), and Before/After pictures of those will be posted soon, as well as here.
The website name is still the same, but it’s a whole new look! SmilesbyPayet.com
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Smiles by Payet Dentistry - Beautiful Smiles. Lifetime Care 