Fast Decision Making with Badly Broken Teeth - To Save or to Sacrifice

Synopsis: 

 It is often difficult knowing whether to save a tooth, or remove it and replace it. The cost and difficulty of saving a tooth are often similar to replacing it. Yet there are often reasons when it is great to save something and lower risk than doing an implant, even though the tooth is badly damaged. In this presentation, we will discuss efficient ways to weigh different risks and factors to quickly decide the best course of action. .

Educational Objectives:

• Understanding patient defined success.

• Weighing the balance of skill and technical difficulty.

• Changing desirability of implants through ages groups and medical history.

• Coping with risk and uncertainty.

Biography

Meet Restoring Excellence and RIPE founder, Dr Lincoln Harris. Dr Harris’s focus has always been on excellence. His pursuit of excellence permeates everything he does. He is a full-time clinician in private practice and understands the pressures and stresses that dentists face in clinical, administration and business situations. As a teacher, Dr Harris is unique in his strong belief about the importance of learning from and sharing his own failures. Even though poor clinical outcomes are disappointing, he sees great value in them as opportunities for what can be learned and taught. Instead of sweeping them under the rug, his view is that the meticulous documentation of these cases with photos and/or video makes it possible to wring every possible benefit from that other great teacher – Hindsight. Over the years this learning strategy from his own clinical outcomes led him all over the world pursuing extensive continuing education training in many diverse areas of dentistry. Dr Harris does not accept dogma for the sake of an unthinking majority. He enjoys the challenge of thinking and researching, considering his own clinical observations, and drawing his own conclusions. He is well known for his frankness and his honesty. This has compelled him to rethink dental education. His own experience has taught him that theoretical learning means little until it is applied. And so, his courses focus on hands-on training and teaching dentists to understand the underlying principles needed for making clinical decisions rather than teaching a cookie cutter approach. He believes it’s important for dentists to be able to think treatment through without needing to follow a list of steps. With his vast and varied clinical and business knowledge, Dr Lincoln Harris is highly respected in the global dental community.