At Ultradent, we see opportunity to enhance our reputation as progressive and trustworthy through new product development. In fact, we have recently created a task force of quality individuals from various disciplines to streamline the product development and release process. This task force is headed by a fabulous guy with a hybrid engineering/marketing personality. His passion is to create systems and processes that identify customer needs and develop products accordingly.

Our new processes are customer focused and market driven; potential solutions are conceptualized in a team effort based on unmet customer needs that are identified by marketing. Then a cross-functional team comes together to conceive of potential solutions to address these customer needs.

Our interdepartmental task force is committed to developing processes for thorough beta testing, evaluation, and fine tuning of new products prior to launch, ultimately ensuring that a new product meets specific needs of our customers. This system requires that everyone keeps a customer focus from even before a new product is conceptualized and throughout its journey through the development process.

We are so lucky to have such caring, quality folks at Ultradent who can help us develop and launch products that will improve our customers’ ability to perform their jobs more successfully. I personally look forward to the release of some exciting new products developed through these customer-focused processes.

Dear Dr. Fischer,

In June, I had the privilege of going to Africa with the Mothers Without Borders program. Mothers Without Borders is a non-profit organization aimed at addressing the needs of orphaned and abandoned children in a holistic manner. They support efforts to provide safe shelter, food, clean water, education and access to caring adults. Part of their mission is to assure every child has someone to care for them and teach them of their value.

The program took a small group of us into villages to provide medical screening, recreation and education for the children.  We taught the women in the villages skills such as knitting so they would have items to trade for food.  We also taught them how to maintain good hygiene to prevent ringworm or other diseases.  We distributed hygiene kits that included Ultradent’s Opalescence toothpaste and Smile toothbrushes.  Thank you again for donating these items.

I’ve been asked what I remember most about my trip and I can tell you that I don’t remember the days but I remember “moments”.  One of the moments was spending time with one of the street kids at the Chisomo House.  She caressed my hair and said “you’re like my mother”.  I remember spending the day with Gordon, an orphaned boy in one of the villages, because he never left my side from the moment we arrived.  I remember Kupa, a seven year old orphaned boy, greeting me with a big hug.  When I tried to step away, he wouldn’t let go because he just wanted to be held.  I remember playing hokey pokey for hours and having 30-50 kids anxiously wait for the next round.  And, I will never forget the sweet girl with green glitter on her face that I met on the side of the road my last day in Zambia.  She hugged me and kissed my cheek and asked that I never forget her.   These sweet memories are imprinted on my heart.

I recorded this in my journal on Wednesday, June 18^, 2008:   I have been in Zambia, Africa since Saturday, June 14^th and since that time, 30,855 children have lost a parent to AIDS in sub-Saharan Africa.  It is expected that 33% of Zambian children will be orphaned by the end of 2010.  I ask myself, what do I have to offer these people? What is my part in all of this?

It was hard to answer that question four days upon arrival.  However, after being there for two and half weeks I learned that my part is to love, comfort, support, and give of myself one person at a time.  Mother Theresa once said, “I never look at the masses as my responsibility.  I look only at the individual.  I can love only person at a time.  I can feed only one person at a time.  Just one, one, one.  I picked up one person—maybe if I didn’t pick up that one person, I wouldn’t have picked up the others.  The whole work is only a drop in the ocean.  But if we don’t put the drop in, the ocean would be one drop less.  Same thing for you.  Same thing in your family.  Same thing in the church where you go.  Just begin…one, one, one.”

Thanks you for supporting my opportunity to experience giving love, one person at a time. 

Lori Page

A colleague of mine, Dr. Louis Malcmacher, invited Ultradent to support a very important cause. I’ve listed a few of the alarming stats he shared on the incidence of oral cancer:

• Oral cancer kills one American every hour of every day. The mortality rate has remained the same for 40 years!
• Two-thirds of oral cancer cases are detected in late stages where the survival rate is only 22%.
• The death rate for oral cancer is higher than that of cervical cancer, leukemia, and Hodgkin’s lymphoma, to name a few.

Last week, Ultradent hosted a group of bright young men and women from various backgrounds and specialties for a full day of training related to public speaking, photography and PowerPoint presentations. The meeting stemmed from a idea of Tufts University’s Dr. Gerard Kugel. He recognized the need to provide education on the “basics” for new speakers. The group of individuals we hosted last week consisted of under-represented sects of the population which are coincidentally under-represented on the current lecture circuit. As a company, Ultradent will always support the concept of education and visibility for those who faced with any disadvantage. The first day of the conference was managed by Dr. Gary Genard, President of Public Speaking International (www.publicspeakinginternational.com). We often assume that public speaking is a natural component of education but this is rarely the case. I’ve found that it is an art like any other that must be mastered through continual practice. Dr. Genard has decided to specialize in the dental industry with tips and techniques on everything from case presentations to lectures in front of an audience. The second presenter was Dr. Greg Lutke who specializes in photography and PowerPoint. Dr. Gregory Lutke graduated from Baylor College of Dentistry in 1985 and maintains a private practice in Plano, Texas. He is the Founder and CEO of Dallas Dental Solutions (www.dental-solutions.com), a digital hands-on facility where attendees experience hands-on courses on digital communication technology as it relates to dentistry. Attendees of Dr. Lutke’s course learn how to communicate complex multi-disciplinary cases to patients in a simple and easy to understand format. The end result is also a transformation to a digital office. Dr. Kugel and I joined forces the last day to offer suggestions for getting into the lecture circuit. Collectively, we’ve found that opportunities result from participation in study clubs, tradeshows and publishing to name a few. We both share the same advice for success - the importance of staying honest and having a desire to give back and share the information with others. Overall, this was an exciting time spent with potential future “voices” of dentistry. For sure we must pay attention to the future. My daughter Dr Jessop is a gifted and wonderful dentist. It is enjoyable to see how she grows with each lecture she gives. And, I must say that it is fun to co-present with her. The youth in dentistry bring a new and fresh dimension but women also do. Fun stuff!!

I was working on a tissue management CE course last week and it triggered me to share a few thoughts. Certainly, tissue management is one of the most important subjects in operative dentistry. In my early days at school, I loved full mouth reconstruction. This caused me to become engaged in the research of better ways to achieve predictable tissue management. I realized then that poor impressions can lead to ill-fitting crown margins and that this ultimately leads to crowns and bridges prematurely failing. In contemporary adhesive dentistry, there are even times where we need to prepare and seal/bond margins subgingivally. Even when taking extra care, some soft tissue might be cut. Historically, we've used chemical mechanical packs against the cut tissues to move them away from the margins and to stop bleeding at the same time. I discovered that trying to do both of these simultaneously can be challenging and unpredictable. I began studying the problem in 1973 when I was a young dental student at Loma Linda. I later studied the status quo of impressions in commercial labs and came to realize the vast majority of the impressions did not show all of the margin. When our crowns etc don't fit, it is most always the fault of our incomplete impressions, not the fault of laboratory technicians.

A specific case comes to mind where a patient with a Class III skeletal deformity received surgical correction. The surgeon chose to remove the lower first molars and close the space surgically. Prior to this, two different dentists had placed crowns on the two lower molars. The same technician had made the crowns for the molar crown albeit placed a couple of years apart. I still have pictures of the two extracted teeth with the crowns in place. One crown is significantly shy of the margin, while the other fits nicely. The same technician constructed both crowns. How do we know this? The patient is/was sister to the technician. I was once again reminded of the critical need to adequately displace tissue and to obtain quality hemostasis prior to impression making. Quality tissue management, be it the direct or the indirect procedure, is paramount!

Thank you,
Dan

We're saddened by the tragedy of the Midwest floods and we realize how difficult this time must be for those who have been affected. Nature has chosen a path with difficult consequences. The devastation of the flood has extended throughout several counties destroying the homes and businesses of many of our colleagues. Ultradent would like to offer support to those with dental practices that have been damaged to help begin the path towards recovery. If your dental practice has been impacted by this tragedy, we'd like to help by offering a discount on the supplies required to help you reestablish a functional practice. For information on how to redeem the flood relief discount, please call us at 1-888-230-1420 and press #1. Our customer support staff is available and prepared to meet your immediate needs from 6:00 am to 6:00 pm, Mountain Time. Please share this information with any others who may need our assistance. While we're certain it will take time for life to return to normal, we're reassured by the collective support of the community. We hope to do our part by helping those affected rebuild their practices. The families in the Midwest will be in our thoughts and prayers.

Ultradent recently launched a new campaign with its new orthodontic division, "Opal Orthodontics". Both the Ultradent and Opal Orthodontics management team with the suggestion of Jeff Smith, suggested that we partner with the Susan G. Komen for the Cure foundation. The partnership entails donating a significant percentage of earnings from Opal Orthodontic’s adhesive line to the foundation. The more I learn about this organization, the more I'm impressed. The promise and commitment of the surviving sister, Nancy G. Brinker is exemplary. Nancy has dramatically shown that "ONE PERSON CAN MAKE A DIFFERENCE"! And ok, hundreds of thousands have rallied to help her cause but Nancy was the spark, the drive and the follow through - the human with the vision and the passion to make it all come together. It's amazing! Between the commitment Nancy made to her sister Susan who later died of cancer in 1982 until the present, the organization has raised one BILLION dollars for the cause. I toast Nancy, her family/parents who instilled values, ethics and care in their children so that when the opportunity arose, there was a virtual automatic shift in human care, courage, integrity and work ethic inside to blast from the launch pad and hence generate this herculean effort!! Nancy, Susan and their family created the tipping point to help make it a better world!! One person. . . one family, can make a difference! Good stuff, Dan

I want to share an excerpt from a letter I received from one of our valued employees, Carol Jent.  Carol has worked for Ultradent for 12 years.  She just returned from a humanitarian mission to China.  I share this with you because it exemplifies the type of experience I think we as dentists need at least once in our careers.

“Dr. Fischer, I arrived back in the United States yesterday… a changed person but I think a better person. My trip to China was some of the hardest but most rewarding work I have ever done. I walked around for 5 days with a lump in my throat fighting back the tears - tears of compassion and joy. There was so much poverty and need but so much humility, pride (the good kind) and love. These people pull at your heart strings something fierce - the people that walk or come by a rickshaw-type bike many, many miles in hope of getting help and seeing the American dentists; the desperate parents just begging you to help their child; the elderly who have terrible abscesses and gum disease begging to get out of pain; the orphans that are scared to death and have never seen a Westerner.  The little cleft palate babies are particularly rough.

To share a small part of a huge experience… there was a "grandma and grandpa" that brought their 2 month-old severely cleft grandchild to the clinic every day in hope the doctor could help the poor little girl’s deformed face/mouth.  She needed help so she could breathe and eat better. We couldn't do anything at the time (at this particular clinic, anyway) because the baby was so young. The grandparents cried (I cried). The grandparents took the baby in when the mom abandoned it for being a "freak". They love that baby so much. When they left the building (or anytime they were out in public) they had to cover the little girl's face to keep others from taunting them. We promised the family we would be back next year to help the baby.  The upside?  We were able to help seven others with cleft deformities.

That is one of the sad stories but we have many happy ones too. Like the many times we gave orphans an OH kit (brush. paste, floss, instruction sheet in Chinese) and a toy.  They were so excited! I swear, you'd think we had just handed them the crown jewels. One 15 year-old boy had a Class IV that abscessed a long time ago which had decayed up into the canal.  We decided to take heroic measures.  I walked Dr. Woolsey through the AET system and we managed to clean and seal it the best we could.  We begged the orphanage to let him come back the next day to restore it. Finally, we bribed the orphanage teacher/driver with 2 toothbrushes and toothpaste so he brought the boy back the following day.  We placed a post, used Amelogen Plus with Vit-L IrB and it looked great!  The kid didn't understand what we were doing the entire time until I handed him a mirror. His eyes popped out of his head and if he said "sank you" once, he said it a million times!

Needless to say the oral hygiene in this region was non-existent. Young children with black stain and tartar like you might see in the US on a 40+ year old who had never seen a dentist... or worse. Amazing.  Once it was removed, the tissue looked like hamburger. We did give out OH kits with pictures and instruction written in Chinese. Sometimes you can cheat yourself out of this experience and ask yourself “why bother.”  But I would tell myself, even if this is the only time many of these patients EVER have their teeth cleaned or restored, this one time may give them an extra year or two of having teeth and a better quality of life.  True, they won’t necessarily know it was because of this care they received but I will.

The dentists that were part of our group were an amazing collection of humanitarian hearts!  All in all, we worked long days and saw well over 500 patients the week we were there. You may be hearing many, many thanks from them for the supplies Ultradent donated.  We experienced many late evenings some of which were spent training local dentists.

I worked as a hygienist, assistant, nurse, office manager, supply clerk, lecturer. I can never thank you enough for this experience. I hope to have the opportunity to do it again and feel it has greatly furthered and reinforced Ultradent's mission to improve oral healthcare  – globally!  Attached are some photos of patients and the cases I mentioned above (some are a bit graphic). I hope you enjoy them and can put up with my mind set for a while.  I will probably be bringing up various experiences in conversation for a long, long time… I apologize in advance J!”

Carol Jent, RDH, BA

At the end of the day, we (as dentists, hygienists, dental assistants) have a humanitarian obligation.  We’ve been gifted with the means to improve the oral care of other humans.  It makes no sense to reserve opportunities to provide care for only those we’re blessed to call our patients.

Dan

I've had the opportunity to associate with a few executives from the American Association of Pediatric Dentistry at a Kellogg School of Business leadership training program. A few years ago, we were at a dinner function with 6 or 7 of us at the table when the subject of bottle-mouth syndrome came up. All the doctors at the table were pediatric dentists except for me. However, with my roots a great portion of my patients have been children. We were all sharing challenges of working with little ones that had bottle mouth syndrome. One of the doctors was a wonderful lady dentist named Patty Lewis. (Bottle-mouth syndrome is difficult to deal with, as you know. The corrective treatment can be most challenging to the Pediatric Dentist because it often means that the little patient has to be put down on general anesthesia. Certainly, they've lost their smile and it's difficult to regain it completely, even with corrective treatment.) The men at the table were discussing the subject with some level of understanding and conviction and the consensus was that it was necessary to prevent the syndrome by having mothers keep the bottle away from the children after one year of age. Patty sat quietly and listened at first but then provided a fabulous education (women have brought such a fabulous dimension to dentistry. They see, hear and feel things that many times males may just "gloss" over. Additionally, it's exciting when these younger dentist giving us older dentists a chance to learn something new and exciting. It reminds us that the torch will keep going up the mountain after we're gone.) Patty told us that she practices in the Bronx and that she serves a very diverse segment of Americans there. She shared the idea of looking past just the oral cavity. She said something that I'd never thought of before and I think is relevant to every clinician in the world. She discussed how she has patients who wake up crying at 2:00 a.m. like all little ones. In most families, the father and/or mother will wake up to help the little one. Tragically, there are a few families where if the mother can't calm the baby by placing a bottle in their mouth to stop the screaming, the dad might beat the baby! We think we've got all of this figured out at times, even as professionals, and then, lo and behold, it turns out there can be more to the picture than what is on the surface. Certainly, we can't separate the oral cavity from the gray matter but more importantly we can't separate it from the family, culture and the like. Patty went on to share that she and others had done quite a bit of research (Patty works part-time at Stony Brook). The research shows that if one can get a high risk patient in the office by one year of age and their teeth are erupted at that time, application of fluoride varnish as often as two times per month can eliminate bottle-mouth syndrome. This is clinically and humanly relevant! This is why the AAPD released their recommendations of up to six treatments a year for the high risk child and the ADA recommends 4 times per year for children starting at one year of age. It would obviously be next to impossible to get a fluoride tray into a little one-year-old's mouth, and if you did, it would be dangerous. The logic behind the varnish is that it's a higher percentage concentration than the gel, but the volumes used are much lower. Fluoride simply provides a thin film that’s applied against enamel. It prevents the chance of volumes being swallowed. Fluoride varnish facilitates a rapid way to deliver a small quantity, volume-wise, of fluoride, which can remain in the oral cavity for multiple hours and/or days, releasing small quantities over and extended time period. Compare this to the systemic route where the fluoride is dispersed throughout the body, simply to have small percentages of it delivered back through the saliva to the teeth or compare it to when high concentration gels are applied but for only up to 4 minutes and the benefits derived from "duration to exposure" become obvious. Fluoride varnish presents a fabulous opportunity. The AAPD has taken a position on fluoride varnish. They have made a public announcement and have invited their membership to get their little patients in at one year of age and, where indicated, apply the fluoride varnish. Patty and others of this leadership group shared that they do try to customize the treatment to the needs of the patient. For example, with the more rampant caries such as the bottle-mouth syndrome, they apply fluoride varnish as often as every other month. For the moderate risk patient, application will be quarterly or semi-annually. Otherwise, it should be an annual application. It's fun when you can see even old ideas, such as fluoride, used in new ways to bring about such important solutions to these kinds of needs. It has become a great enough need in many states that it has been legalized for pediatricians to provide this treatment. Some states are even paying for such treatment through their welfare dentistry program. Certainly, the more we can get ahead of this program and cover the bases as dentists the better. This is "Dentistry" after all. For sure, we must be responsive to the needs of the population we serve. Dan

As a dentist, Memorial Day often causes me to reflect upon the many veterans I've known as patients over the years. Regardless of viewpoints on the war, they all paid a high price for their experience. The veteran "patients" that didn't make it home paid the ultimate price. For many that make it home, they are condemned to carry scars for life, both mental and physical. Graduating from Loma Linda in the 70s, we all learned IV sedation. Leenie and I will never forget working through a tumultuous and scary couple of hours with a returned vet from Vietnam when the IV, instead of relaxing/sedating him, reverted him back to the scary role of a prisoner held captive by soldiers of the North. I'm certain that what we lived with him over those couple of hours was nothing compared to the actual ordeal. I must admit, as the years went by, I came to realize that as a GP I could achieve most of the benefits I needed from IV sedation, but in a much safer way by sticking to Nitrous Oxide. I thank LLU every time I use it. In important ways, it provides the clinician the capability of rapid reversal by simply switching from Nitrous mix to total Oxygen. More recently, I was again reminded of the fact that many US immigrants entering at the age of the draft (or simply old enough to enlist) participated as American soldiers and paid their price as US vets. Two years ago, my dentist daughter, Dr Jaleena Jessop, and I encountered a case where a World War II veteran needed rehabilitation. He needed us to work on the "full mouth rehabilitation" I'd done for this veteran in the late 70s. Now, with a few more years of experience under my belt and greater ability to listen, we discovered that Helmut at the age of 8 came to America in the 1930s with all of his family to escape the entrapment and goofiness of Hitler's Nazi Germany. At age 19, he was part of the largest amphibious armada the world has ever known, landing with the Allies on the beaches of Normandy. We all know the tremendous price these veterans paid. Regardless the war or the popularity of the war, we all owe a world of gratitude to those who have served. We often hear the phrase "God Bless America". It is fitting we often exclaim same or similar feelings of gratitude as portrayed by the example of a like phrase: "God Bless our soldiers and veterans". And, may we all do all that we reasonably can do to minimize the need for war as much as it is possible. As a start, we can begin by living as Gandhi taught: "Become the change you wish to see in the world". I thank all soldiers and veterans on this special day of remembrance. Dan