I have a soft spot in my heart for funny Engrish. Except when the person writing it has a blatant disrespect for patents, trademarks, and such. Isolite Systems has a slam-dunk product that has been previously featured here on DentalBuzz, and yes, we’ve even suggested that a clever hack was available which still gives the Isolite company a repeat source of income. There’s hacking, and then there’s design forgery.

This introductory email should sufficiently scare you away from even thinking about going to the dark side:

Dear Sir/Madam:

Good day! I am very pleasure to send you an E-mail to introduce our product– ISOlight Shining Suction! Pls check attachment. This product can bring a few of advantage for dentistry:

1. Work Faster, Brighter, Drier

ISOlight Shining Suction is with a continuous, powerful and shadowless illumination. Dentist can see it mach more clearly inside mouth, then they can work accurately and faster. The special design mouthpiece can supply a widely space for dentist. Operation become more convenience. This device can connect with high/low suction. then the water will go throuth mouthpiece and maintain mouth drier. The patient doesn’t need to get up the spit the water.

2. Shining Suction Stop Interruption and save more time, dentst can get more appointment

Base of the advantage, dentst can complete the operation faster and patient become more comfortable. EACH OPERATION WILL BE FAST 25%-30%. In the same working time, dentist can take more appointment and create more profit. In the same time, dentist and patient would not feel tried.

3.  Save Work

Shining Suction supply self-suction. Nurse doesn’t need to stay beside patient and hold high/low suction. She/he will be free to do the other assistance such as: mix the colophony and materail, clean the instrument, do autoclavable, pass and take the instrument etc. Then dentist can do operation more dedicated.

4. Safe

Special Mouthpiece will protect tongue and cheek. Patient will not be easy to get hurt.

5. Better Ergonomics

The ergonomic design of Shining Suction reduces fatigue and repetitive stress associated with retraction, suctioning, eyestrain, and motion spent adjusting headlights, overhead light or otherwise positioning the patient for better access or visibility.

6. Save Cost

The bright shining suction will supply the powerful light in mouth. Dentist doesn’t need to buy expensive fiber optic product, such as: Fiber optic handpice, fiber optic scaler, headlight, etc.

ISOlight Shining Suction is the new revolution dental product with many useful advantage. It will definitely help you increase your efficiency and profit. ISOlight will be your best assistant on your job.

If you have any question, pls feel free to contact me.

Do you still fight in the hard competition of old product? Do you still think about how to increase your business? Do you still warry about the profit reduce of old product? I think it is time to indraught ISOlight Shining Suction to help you.

For more detail and best distributor price, pls send E-mail to reference with your company detail.

Sincerely waitting for your reply. Have a nice day! Best regard

Kevin Guan, Export Manager, Codent Technology Co., Ltd

_________

If you ever see any other dental product knockoffs let us know here at DentalBuzz so we can “out” the dastardly company. SOPA and PIPA censoring isn’t the answer to problems like this on the internet. Awareness can only go so far, too. The real stand today has to be internal, so make sure that you continue to promote good enterprise instead of just free enterprise.

And it’s so hard for me to stand firm on my ethics because they make some REALLY CUTE HERMES BAG knockoffs out there! But I must stand up. For Isolite. And for every innovative company online that does its best to stay honest.

by Trish Walraven

Photoshop is fun. You can use it to make a fake Yelp review to help illustrate a point that you’re trying to make about something else. Like a patient writing an online review of your dental practice:

Vindication, finally! Yelp lets me air the true story of this miserable experience, and no one can stop me. First off, I had total confidence in the way I cared for my car – had the tires rotated every six months, oil changes every 3000 miles, if it was in the manual, I had it done. About a year after I’d moved into town was when I began noticing a drift to the left (irrespective of the politics here *grin*) so I took my car into Dodgy’s Auto Clinic, which had the highest score on RateMechanics.com. Get this! As I’m filling out some paperwork, one of the forms they’ve handed me is a “Privacy Agreement” that asked me to transfer ownership of any public commentary I might write in the future to Dodgy’s. Like this review – supposedly they now own it. Did the red flag go up? Definitely. Did I heed the warning? Unfortunately not. This mechanic BUTCHERED my car. Nothing feels the same. There are rattles where none previously existed, the steering wheel shimmies when I make a turn, and whenever I drive I just feel like taking a bus instead, it’s THAT BAD. They did fix the drift though, only now it goes in the opposite direction. Just in case I was insane I took it to another shop to get an opinion about their repairs. The second place agreed that unneccessary “treatment” had happened and that it would be difficult and pricey to undo the damage. In the end Dodgy’s did refund my money and asked that I not rip them apart online. I bet! The last thing they did as I walked out was to wave that “agreement” at me. Like it has any authority to do anything except make me mad. I have a destroyed car, and people should know the truth about this “Auto Clinic.” So, Bring it, Dodgy’s. Bring your lawyers. I’ve got everything I need to defend my words. You want to own my words? Here. OWN EM. I now own YOU.

This is a frightening scenario for any service provider. We have a clearly upset individual that seems sincerely convinced her car was ruined by a repair shop. And just one of these unfavorable reviews can inflict massive online damage.

Now let’s take this to dentistry. You got some patients out there talking smack about the quality of your work. Not your chairside manner, not your front office person who was less than helpful about payment arrangements. We are in the heart of your business, a heart that could be ripped out by a singular disgruntled review.

(more…)

by Eva Watson

Attention dental patients everywhere:

Feel like that new crown isn’t fitting right? Do you feel it may cause discomfort? Brain hemorrhaging? Death? Well, put that phone down, you silly thing. Your lawyer can wait because June is ‘Don’t Sue Your Dentist’ Awareness Month.

As an act of marginal sympathy, I ask those patients who plan on crushing the livelihoods of their dentists to refrain, for a moment, and search your heart for a modicum of compassion. In the spirit of ‘Don’t Sue Your Dentist’ Awareness Month, I offer latent plaintiffs a poetic gesture of retort on behalf of your dentists. I call this poem, “Oh, Come ON! You Gotta Be F%$@! Kidding Me?!”

Oh, Come ON! You Gotta Be F%$@! Kidding Me?!”

Beyond the reaches of simple men
You further the legions
Of those who wish to harm us
Into the shadows of the Beast
(The Man with the Briefcase)
We shall overturn your
Tortuous hands in our pockets
And fight… fight!
For the putrid, rotting silver in
The mouths of those who wish to
Destroy us was but a step away from
Excavation into Happiness
A porcelain utopia
Awaited those who turned on our Good selves
BEHOLD!
The wrath that disguises itself as
Innocent sufferer is the Devil
In Disguise and I’m bringing you down along with your pandering attorney!
Yeah! Booyah! How do ya like me now? Can’t hear that, you say? I said
I’m gonna countersue you!
I’m gonna Smear your name like a laboratory sample
On a glass slide!
And I’m gonna get your little dog, too!

by Trish Walraven

We know that you want to protect your family from anything that you hear about in the media. Especially radiation. Especially now, with the leaks at the nuclear power plant happening in Japan and with Dr. Oz telling everyone that going to the dentist could endanger their thyroid glands.

Your perception is made reality here at Safe Smiles Dental Care. Are you afraid of the cumulative effects of flying in airplanes, going outdoors, and X-Rays? Good.

Why do we say good? Because the way we nurture your fear of radiation sets us apart from other dental offices. We won’t say, “Oops, let’s re-take that xray; it didn’t come out right” here. We will get it right the first time, because, gosh darn it, we care. And we spent a lot of money on rectangular collimators with little magnets and beepers that tell you that we’re all lined up. And what about “Sorry, the thyroid collar will obstruct our view so we can’t use it”? You won’t hear that in our office either. We’ll just not worry your pretty little head about that part of your jaw.

This is what we call scratching our niche, baby. Our practice is the ultimate low-radiation dental office, and you won’t find this level of concern down the street at Dr. Happy-go-lucky’s practice. No way. We’ll massage your fears away with our assurance that any cancer you get in your lifetime won’t be from dental radiation.

So give us a call today at (990) 648-2130 to schedule your complimentary screening exam. We also offer just radiological services if you prefer to have your dental x-rays taken at our office and then forwarded to a dentist of your choice. But that’s such a hassle. Come on, you know you’d rather stay here with us. Especially when you start seeing these warning symbols posted all over the signs of our local competition:

Stay safe, and we’ll look forward to seeing you soon!

__________________

Yesterday on his network television show Dr. Mehmet Oz defended his remarks back in September about the necessity of lead thyroid collar use during dental x-rays whenever possible by stating that “there’s no good reason not to protect yourself against radiation.” While this is true, the bottom line is about using radiation in a way that leads to best outcomes in our patients, a point that several guest physicians also tried to make despite the protests of Dr. Oz.

Seriously, when you look at the sources of radiation in the world today, why worry about the miniscule intentional amounts? All radiation is dangerous, and it should be limited as much as possible, but the only way to avoid it totally is to dig a radon-free hole somewhere and live like a makedd roll gnat the rest of your life (ummmm. I mean naked mole rat. So hard to get that one right!). Calm your fears with this Radiation Dose Chart that was recently compiled, complete with facts about the Fukushima Nuclear plant (click on the image for full-size).

Another thing that I whipped up here for all you DentalBuzz readers is a Medical Radiation Dose Chart to download and show to your patients that have no idea how much radiation that they may be getting from the more common diagnostic procedures. I didn’t know a lot of it myself, so originally I created it to use in our office but you may find it helpful too. Did you know that it takes 10,000 PA radiographs to reach the annual limit of x-radiation? How many CT scans does it take to reach the limit? I’m too lazy to do all the math but it looks like 1 CT scan equals about 2,000 bitewings (film, not digital) according to this chart.

Regardless, we all have a responsibility to admit that we don’t know what we don’t know. And perhaps Dr. Oz may be a little right; we should do our best to protect our patients from radiation whenever possible, adapting the ALARA (As Low As Reasonably Achievable) principle with regards to radiation in dentistry.

Enter the media blitz. Interactive Digital Imaging (IDI) is re-introducing its rectangular collimator with a PR campaign targeting consumers. Dental patients will be encouraged to “Look for the Green Ring” at their dental offices, similar to the “Ask Your Doctor About” style of direct-to-consumer advertising used by the pharmaceutical industry. Originally priced at $1295, the newly redesigned Tru-Align collimator will be offered at $795 with improvements that overcome cone-cut errors and enhancements that make the positioner more user-friendly.

My favorite feature of the Tru-Align system is not that it can be used with any typical XCP holders (but still a good thing – this includes sensors, phosphor plates, and film), but that when you bump up the xray cone to the collimation ring, you get a magnetized lock-on and an audible beep to let you know that you will NOT be getting a cone-cut on that image. BAM! ZAP! If nothing else, the precision of this thing should impress our patients. And if they’re the kind that are really concerned about their radiation exposure, you can spew some factoids about reducing the absorbed dose from around 150 microsieverts to 30 microsieverts for an 18-image FMX series.

What it finally comes down to is having the right things to say to your patients when they ask about radiation, and addressing any real problems that you may be having in your office, like the assistant who has to re-take a periapical x-ray three times in order to get the one that you need. Or making sure that your thyroid collars are actually being Velcroed behind your patients’ necks. Or halting the bacteria-fest breeding on your lead aprons. My bet is that’s the biggest offense of all. Ahhh, a problem for another day…..

___

Thanks to these blogs whose articles have helped shape this one:

The ALARA Principle: Dr. Jeffrey Hoos and Michael Razzano on Dentistry IQ

The Digital Dentist Lorne Lavine

Dr. Oz discusses Dental X-Rays and Thyroid Cancer: Dr. Todd Welch at The Science of Dentistry

by Eva Watson

It’s a frustrating time to be a Dental Hygienist nowadays, from an RDH point of view. The lack of job opportunities, discourse over the creation of the Advanced Dental Hygiene Practitioner, and the selling-of-dentistry creed that owners want hygienists to adopt has produced enormous conflicts between dentists and hygienists. And it seems to be getting worse.

The issue appears to be about two things: money and control. That’s my opinion. If others in each field happen to agree with these views, let’s explore further.

As dental health professionals, what can we do to ease the burden of these two issues? How can we find common ground and move beyond the derision and animosity? I respectfully suggest:

NERF Dart Tag NDTL Strikefire Value Pack/ Fight-To-The-Death Match!

Hygienists: Talk about fire power! Well, I mean, they’re darts, but, oh! What foamy NERF fire power!
Dentists: It’s a VALUE pack. You will benefit from this monetarily… if your hygienist doesn’t dart the crud out of you first. Whee!

Mandatory Overtime Marshmallow Blaster Operatory Raids

Soft, sweet, and fat-free, hygienists and dentists may find the shooting of squishy, cylindrically-shaped goodies a much needed physical and mental release from the constant day-to-day fight for control, respect, and reduced overhead. Thank you, thinkgeek.com. I’m forever in awe of your geekdom.

Star Wars: The Clone Wars Lightsaber Duels (Wii) for Ultimate Dental Supremacy

Dentists: you automatically have to be the villain, but don’t worry. You can choose General Grievous, Count Dooku, or Anakin Skywalker. I would select General Grievous myself just because he was so very bad and evil.

Hygienists: I expect you to choose Yoda because he packed much wallop, was very wise, and had lots of experience behind him. The choice is yours, of course.

There are many ways in which to find balance between dentists and hygienists. I’m certain one day we will all work together in harmony.