News : 80 Dentists attend The Implant Centre Conference
Eighty dentists attended our first dental implant conference at The Aurora Hotel in Crawley on the 4th July. This was in conjunction with Ankylos.
The delegates were general practitioners who wanted to increase their knowledge of implant dentistry and the Ankylos system. Emphasis was made on the symbiotic relationship between The Implant Centre and more than 50 general practitioners currently providing implant retained restorations for their patients, in their own general practice setting.
The programme included demonstrations of simple but fundamentally important restorative techniques, an outline of current best practice in implant dentistry, and a guide to trouble shooting the most common problems encountered when restoring implants together with the respective solutions available.
Opening the conference Ankylos Managing Director, Chris Meldrum, described the future of the dental market emphasising the huge potential growth for general practitioners. His projection for the future of the dental implant market outlined how specialised dental implant centres would provide the implant surgery, with the patient being referred back to the dentist for restoration. Training in specialist restorative dentistry techniques will be offered by these centres in the form of training days/evenings or mentoring. This will enable the dentist to restore more complex cases.
An introduction to The Implant Centre by Bill Schaeffer and Guy Barwell followed. They explained how the centre can help dentists in providing dental implants. Guy then presented an informative lecture on the typical issues encountered during dental restoration.
The final lecture of the morning was by Andy Evans, of Implant Restorations, who gave a detailed insight into how a dental laboratory helps with the restoration of dental implants. In the afternoon delegates were shown the benefits of the open and closed tray impression techniques. Ankylos provided equipment for all the delegates to experience taking impressions using these techniques.
Bill finished off the lectures with a synopsis of the more advanced surgical procedures, providing an insight into solutions for the more challenging surgical cases. Following excellent feedback from the delegates it has been agreed that the conference will become a regular calendar event.
