Keywords: British Endodontic Society, Dynamic Guidance, Navident, Zumax, SicatEndo, VirtEasy Dental Pro, Dental Imaging Company, Clark Dental, Paula Villam
It is always a privilege to attend a conference and I was able to get to Belfast this November to the annual get together of the British Endodontic Society in Belfast.
I was particularly fortuitous to be there as if it was not for a conversation with Rob Pounds from the Digital Dental Company, I would’ve been in Dublin where I had booked my flights to and hotel.
Unfortunately having to get up at 3 am meant that I cannot tell you much about Crown lengthening or Bioceramics discussed in the morning table clinics as I was fast asleep.
The fun part was the trade exhibition where I could immerse myself in the latest Endotech. It was a pleasure to find equipment that had been newly developed or upgraded to do the kind of things I had thought about and experimented with years ago, but are now fully formed realities.
I was particularly impressed with software for guided endodontics by SicatEndo and it had my mind racing in how we could improve our own embryonic use of these techniques.
I was delighted to find a teaching module using haptics from Virteasy Dental Pro. I was part of a team at the Eastman working together with Smile-on and Noam Tamir probably 10 years ago on a module such is this, but it did not amount to much, probably due to the graphics power required. Now it is really very impressive. I would like to see their endo module. It would be a dream to get eight of these for our training courses but at £25,000 a unit this might be somewhat unrealistic.
I also found the Navident to have improved significantly since I trialled it many years ago. I was told that I was the first endodontist in the UK to do this. They are now talking about a Zumax head up display within the microscope to guide the pathway to the canals and it is rather exciting to consider how we could also use this in practice. See my blog video here.
I did feel rather old realising that the two latest Presidents of the British Endodontic Society are past postgraduate students of mine, but the technology I found made me enthused and feel younger again.
I managed to mostly stay awake for the afternoon session which was spectacular. A presentation on endodontic microsurgery by Paula Villam featured stunning high resolution microscope videography that I was very jealous of. Time to upgrade my video camera!
An innovation I have not seen was putting these videos to catchy soundtracks. It had me wondering what I would use when I move into this arena. Possibly Chorus of the Hebrew Slaves, or perhaps Monty Python‘s Flying Circus.
It would be unfair just to pick out Paula’s presentation. All the speakers were excellent and gave us glimpses into the future of endodontics with advanced technology, which has always been a passion of mine.
I return home with a long mental shopping list. These occasions are more expensive than they initially seem.
