I recently had the privilege to be part of the cerecdoctors.com mentor field trip to Bicon Implants. The trip included an implant surgical and prosthetic course held at their headquarters, a facility second to none.

The first thing that caught my attention was the person in the front of the room. Why was my Uncle Bill standing in front of the class? The same mannerisms and that Irish smile jumped out at me. But it was not Uncle Bill, or as his nephews and nieces referred to him, “Sweet, lovable, Old, Bill - SLOB.” A nickname that he cherished; it always brought a smile to his face. And as we got older a quick and witty sarcastic response would just as quickly be returned that made the room erupt in laughter. If you dish it out, you’ve got to take it was how he lived. He was a man stuck in his ways and had the experience to prove his point.

After shaking my head I realized it wasn’t my Uncle Bill, but Dr. Vin Morgan, the head of Bicon. He started by telling us the story of Bicon, how they have met opposition in the past and still face it from companies with larger marketing budgets. These companies unwilling to accept the position and products of Bicon – a company that hasn’t changed the basic design of its implant since it started in 1985 – while these other companies make a normal practice of switching this and changing that on a regular basis.

The hard facts of implant dentistry are not hard facts any more, and Vin Morgan helped to open the eyes of the mentors in the room. He said that they say what they say and you can accept it and bring it into your office, or you can stay set in your ways and at least have a good dinner at the end of the day and go home.

As the day went on I started to see how the advantages of their system worked. The advantages of their surgical protocol definitely raised eyebrows all around me. Case after case of fantastic soft tissue. Case after case of bone growth around the implants, even those that have significant discrepancy with the crown-to-root ratio. In fact, as they have matured as a company, they have gotten away from implant lengths that we would consider the norm. All of their long implants have been discontinued since the shorter implants have a better response from the host. There were implants placed in sites I would never had attempted to try and these implants did more than just stay, they grew bone.

As Rich Rosenblatt said in his blog, there are a lot of similarities with the journey of Bicon and CEREC. Just as I find Sirona a great company to work with as a partner in my practice, I see Bicon being another great partner.

As I finished my dinner at the close of the course, surrounded by some great CEREC friends, we asked Dr. Morgan, “So how was the dinner?” I tried to stir the pot and say, “The first course was good, but I expected some good Irish food!”

He said, “Well if that was the case, then you pick up the tab.”

Uncle Bill, are you in there?

We all left with smiles after a great weekend and Dr. Morgan shared some words that mean a lot to me:

“The doors to this house are always open for you; we are here to help you however we can.”