As dentists we carry a burden of perfectionism. We need to make a perfect diagnosis and a perfect treatment plan based upon so many factors that often require compromise. A patients desires, the patients ability to accept treatment, medical concerns, finances... All of these things force us to alter what we feel is the perfect way to proceed and come up with a process that everyone involved can agree to. That is tough, but what is really hard is the actual dentistry we are performing.

Our curse as dentists is the fact that we are never really 100% happy with anything we do. We scrutinize our work intensely. We can produce a fantastic result but there is always something we would like to change. This problem leads some down a bad path of burnout and dislike of their profession. Yet others are challenged by this and strive to correct the errors of the past. This is accomplished through reading, questioning, education and practice. For those of you on the quest to perfection, I have one more suggestion for you. The Autopsy.

CEREC affords us a great advantage. We have a virtual representation of our dentistry which can be altered and manipulated at any time. Not so with analog dentistry where you cannot easily go back and redesign the current restoration and see if the result is different. Performing an autopsy of your work will flat out make you a better dentist in the fastest way possible. It does however require us to be brutally honest with ourselves.

I challenge you to sit for a minute or two after your next few cases and reflect upon what went well and what didn't. Was the occlusion high? Were the contacts too tight or too loose? Was the shade off? Was it esthetically pleasing? How did the prep look on the screen? Was the restoration too thin occlusally? How did the patient feel about it? Comfortable? Unsure? Ask yourself these sometimes hard questions and then go back to the design phase, perform an Autopsy of your work and see where the problem was. 

Evaluate the basic's, prep, powder and picture. The prep is the toughest for us to come to grips with. Did we do a good job? Did we do a great job? What and how could we change? There is always something that we want to do better. Was it a visualization problem? Maybe we need greater magnification or a better light source. Was the patient difficult or was the access tough?  Maybe a rubber dam or Isolite would help or maybe the assistant could have done more to aid us? Was the prep rough with irregular margins? Maybe a change in the burs we use is in order? How about or tissue retraction? That's a gut wrencher. Maybe a laser or cord is necessary. The list goes on and on. Really though you know where I am going with this. 

CEREC allows us to do some soul searching. Sometimes the answer is to just slow down and spend a little more time. So there you have it. The challenge is to use your machine to go back and evaluate everything. Use it to tweak the way we personally perform our dentistry. Sometimes it's not us at all. We have user defined options or parameters that can be tweaked as well. Consistently high occlusions? Change the Occlusal Offset Parameter. Chipped margins? Increase the Margin Thickness Parameter. In short, evaluate everything.

Perform an Autopsy of your work routinely and become a better dentist. Guaranteed.

Hello Dr. Jeffrey Caso

I hope you dn't mind I share your wise words on Facebook.
http://www.facebook.com/taiwan.cerec

Dr. Liao,

By all means share on facebook. This is why we have the facebook share button below each blog post.

Please do. It would be an honor.

Jeff this is exactly what I do daily. Your carefully thought out article has been a great blog to me. I have commented many times that I only get better from criticism whether good or bad and hold nothing personally.
The Autopsy.