The Group Dentistry Now Show: The Voice Of The DSO Industry

Join us for the “THE IMPACT ZONE.” Discover the IMPACT Cone Bean Technology can have on clinical diagnosis, treatment planning, and case acceptance for your group practice.

Hosted by Bill Neumann
Guest speaker Dr. Rob Brandes
Guest speaker Mark Iligan, Imaging Sales Manager at Air Techniques

Sponsored by Air Techniques – https://airtechniques.com/

Dr. Brandes & Mark Ilagan discuss:

Dr. Brandes’ journey with CBCT
2D vs. 3D
Recommended training & education
Latest imaging technologies
Why Air Techniques PRIME?

To contact Mark Ilagan – email – mark.ilagan@airtechniques.com
To learn more about PRIME & Air Techniques complete line of imaging products visit – Air Techniques Imaging for DSOs

If you like our podcast, please give us a ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ review on iTunes https://apple.co/2Nejsfa and a Thumbs Up on YouTube.

Our podcast series brings you dental support organization and emerging dental group practice analysis, conversation, trends, news and events. Listen to leaders in the DSO and emerging dental group space talk about their challenges, successes, and the future of group dentistry. The Group Dentistry Now Show: The Voice of the DSO Industry has listeners across North & South America, Australia, Europe, and Asia. If you like our show, tell a friend or a colleague.

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Full Transcript:

Bill Neumann:

Hey, everybody. Welcome back to the Group Dentistry Now Show. I’m Bill Neumann. We are, I think up to episode 108, 109. So quite a few under our belt. And just always thankful to the audience. So whether you’re listening in on Apple, or Google or are you happy to be watching us on YouTube, thanks for being a part of the community. And with a great audience like you, we always get great guests. So we have two wonderful guests here. We have Mark Ilagan from Air Techniques. Mark, welcome to the Group Dentistry Now Show.

Mark Ilagan:

Thanks for having me.

Bill Neumann:

And we have Dr. Rob Brandes. Rob, welcome to the show.

Dr. Robert Brandes:

Thank you.

Bill Neumann:

I was commenting before we started the record and actually before Mark jumped on about Rob’s really cool shelving in the back. So Rob, with that, maybe you can give us a little bit of a background on where you are right now and talk a little bit about your practice.

Dr. Robert Brandes:

Sure. I currently live in New Mexico between Santa Fe and Albuquerque, New Mexico in a little town called Placitas. I work in a group practice that has an office in Albuquerque in the city and I work part-time at a rural office on the other side of the mountain from Albuquerque too. I have experience in private practice and group practice and I also have 20 years plus experience in the DSO format and I am a periodontist by training.

Bill Neumann:

You are also the founder of Hands-On Implant Institute and the co-founder of the National Sleep Alliance. Can you talk about those organizations briefly?

Dr. Robert Brandes:

Sure, I’ve been involved in educating general dentists for quite a long time, 15 plus years including cone beam education, implant dentistry and airway.

Bill Neumann:

That’s great. Thanks Dr. Brandes. Mark, love to get a little bit of your background. I know you’re on the West Coast. You’re with Air Techniques and you are the imaging sales manager for the West.

Mark Ilagan:

That’s correct. I jumped on with Air Techniques probably seven months ago and I’ve been loving it ever since. A great company, great products, great support. I really love the software on the CBCT side. There’s a lot to offer here and a lot of growth. My background did start in the Pacific Northwest in Portland, Oregon with a dealer named Burkhart Dental. And fairly quickly, Sirona approached me and hired me and I was with Sirona for about 13 years.

And between Sirona and Air Techniques, I was able to co-found SICAT USA with a group of guys. I’ve been loving that. Still good friends with everybody I’ve been working with. So it’s nice to have a big network and there’s great people in this industry so I don’t see myself going anywhere except staying dentistry. As you guys know, once you’re in dentistry everybody says you stay. So I’ve been enjoying it.

Bill Neumann:

That’s right. Yep, that’s what I was told when I got in for sure. And 20 years later, I am. So it is a great industry. Mark, actually when I was doing a little bit of homework for this podcast, you have a YouTube channel?

Mark Ilagan:

I do. I call it Coffee and Cone Beam. It is just a casual conversation with doctors such as Dr. Brandes, Dr. Heidi Kohltfarber, Jay Reznick and other doctors just to go over CBCT cases. I understand this, every doctor looks at a case differently. They may treat the same, but their thought processes may be different. So getting to hear what people are thinking about when they’re looking at a case, it’s really interesting to me. And the result and the goal is always better patient care of course. I just am curious about understanding how doctors get to that treatment plan. There’s so many ways to do it and so many schools of thought. So there is so much to learn.

Bill Neumann:

So we’re going to call this episode the impact zone, discover the impact cone beam technology can have on clinical diagnosis, treatment planning, and case acceptance for your group practice. So that’s why we have Mark and Rob with us today. It’s going to go through that discovery process. This is going to be fun. So we talked a little bit about… So Dr. Brandes, you’re at a group practice and you also are working at another practice that’s more rural in nature, right?

Dr. Robert Brandes:

Right.

Bill Neumann:

Okay.

Dr. Robert Brandes:

Exactly. So both settings, yes.

Bill Neumann:

Let’s talk a little bit about why and when you decided to purchase your CBCT machine, Dr. Brandes. So when did that happen and what was why behind that?

Dr. Robert Brandes:

That happened about 12 years ago for me and I have a fairly large implant component to my practice. So I really purchased that round implant surgery and the possibility of doing guided implant surgery.

Bill Neumann:

Okay. I mean was that really the reason was because of the implant focus you had at your practice? You just looked at 2D versus going to CBCT?

Dr. Robert Brandes:

Yeah. That was the main emphasis at the time. I had a few concerns when I was doing it. One, was it really necessary for me to have this in order to stay current and up to date? And then could I really make it work from a return on investment standpoint? So that’s where I was at and it certainly wasn’t brand new technology, so it wasn’t a bleeding edge type thing, but it was really cutting edge at the same time.

I didn’t want to get behind the curve and I had reservations when I first got into CBCT. That was almost immediately alleviated. Once I got the equipment in my office, those concerns dissipated rapidly.

Bill Neumann:

So that was a dozen years ago. Mark, what’s the percentage of docs out there that are using 2D versus CBCT? I mean, I guess the other question should be is maybe some people don’t necessarily need CBCT. So how do you determine that?

Mark Ilagan:

That’s a great question. I don’t know the exact percentage. It would surprise me if it’s even at 10%. I would like to say it’s 10% that own CBCT. But after leaving a larger known imaging company, I realized outside of that world there’s a lot of people that don’t have CBCT, that are relying on 2D. What I’ve seen though is more and more people are interested in CBCT. Maybe it’s because their oral surgeon is using it or their endodontist or their friends have CBCT for a number of reasons.

They’re used to using 2D, panoramic images on a regular basis. But what I find is doctors that buy CBCT will start using it primarily for the 2D site because they’re comfortable with it. And then use it every once in a while for 3D. And then slowly they start seeing the diagnostic benefit of CBCT for the cost of the radiation being exposed, that they start making a shift slowly from 2D to 3D for diagnostic purposes and implant purposes to more 3D CBCT and 2D starting to go as a backup or as a followup source of imaging.

Bill Neumann:

So Mark, that’s a really great point and I don’t want to hijack one of the podcasts that you’ve done before, but when you reference radiation, Dr. Brandes, I know you talked a little bit about this in the podcast that you are on with Mark. Tell me about the difference 2D compared to CBCT.

Dr. Robert Brandes:

Well, the difference between 2D information and CBCT is really once you see three dimensional images and you can scan through volumes and look at anything from buccal lingual perspective or occlusal apical perspective or a cross-sectional view, then you see things as you scan through a volume, literally hundreds of images compared to one image in one plane.

So it really is a three-dimensional look at information. What I didn’t understand when I first purchased CBCT that I became well aware of is that the real richness in this technology I think is in diagnosis and treatment planning. It’s not an implantology. The industry went for implantology right off the bat. It was sort of the low lying fruit. It was easy to find people that were doing a lot of implants and try and pluck those people into cone beam right off.

After using it though, it became apparent to me that the real richness is in diagnosis and treatment planning and lots of studies support that. There’s studies that show that between a 28 and 34% increase in diagnosis from cone beam compared to a regular conventional 2D image. And so that that’s was one big component. The other one is once I found that I showed these images to patients live right in front of them, that they engaged these images unlike what they did with 2D images and it became a very interactive experience and they’re fascinated with the technology.

So it became a really excellent treatment planning case presentation source. And so now for me, it really is kind of the central core of an initial exam and patient engagement and treatment plan at the same time. I think it’s like anything, you have to learn how to integrate that into your workflow in order to have it happen in a seamless way. And you have to be good at navigating.

But the learning curve for this is pretty quick. And so once you can see in 3D so to speak, it’s very hard to imagine looking at things in 2D.

Bill Neumann:

Mark, are you seeing this with a lot of your customers as well that maybe they initially were looking at it from an implant standpoint and are now using it for treatment planning?

Mark Ilagan:

Absolutely right. The incidental finding increase that Dr. Brandes mentioned is real. And if you think about it this way, Bill, think about all the cases in your practice that have a watch on it. And there’s a watch on it because you really don’t know what’s going on. So with CBCT giving you more information, a lot of those watches become treatment plans just because of the additional information you could see in CBCT.

When Dr. Brandes was talking about radiation dose 2D versus 3D, according to Dr. John Ludlow, he shares this information for a full mouth series digital size two sensors, so 18 images size two digital equates to 171 microsieverts according to one of his studies. So 171 microsieverts for a full mouth series and that’s primarily crowns, not a lot of subgingival information there versus a cone beam image which allows more information to be seen in the full jaw, a full oral maxillofacial region. And that averages about 69 microsieverts for a standard scan. So a full mount series size two digital sensors at 171 microsieverts versus 69 microsieverts for a standard scan.

Bill Neumann:

Wow. So if you’re using 2D and now we’re going to CBCT, can you talk a little bit about when you would use one versus the other or is it totally CBCT now or does it really depend on what you’re looking for or what you’re doing?

Dr. Robert Brandes:

The answer there is, there’s very few circumstances that I use 2D for. It primarily involves follow-up like if you’ve done a bone graft and you want to see how that’s healing, you can isolate the software to just take an image of just that area just to see whether it’s filling it properly. When it comes to regular everyday stuff, it’s primarily 3D. 3D has really taken that over.

It’s not only the increase in diagnosis and presentation, but the thing that really becomes readily apparent that Mark was sort of alluding to is there’s a lot better decision-making. You might be able to find pathology on any kind of image, a conventional 2D pan, a PA, but when you can look at it 3D, then the decision-making as far as what the treatment should be for that. That tooth can be dramatically different. 2D tends to underestimate bone loss and overestimate bone gain and bone grafting, whereas 3D gives your real image. Everything is a one-to-one ratio.

So you would look at an image for example and see some type of lesion. But when you look at in 3D, you might realize that it’s not amenable to being retreated. So we’re seeing a lot of practitioners now send out endodontically treated teeth to endodontists out of their practice for retreat. Most endo officers have 3D these days and once they image it in 3d, recognize that it’s not really a good candidate for retreatment because of the bone mass and the problems with the tooth and recommend extraction.

So that’s an unfortunate situation for the general office because now they’ve referred the patient out, patient got charged for a consult and an image and then got sent back ultimately just to have the tooth extracted. So there’s a lot better decision-making involved. You can’t weigh that into an amount necessarily, but also a lot easier to explain to the patients about what’s happening. So there’s a lot of co-discovery with those images in 3D too.

So the quick answer to your question then, I guess I gave that up a little while ago, but the answer really is 2D is only for a very isolated circumstances that the additional exposure for the 3D images is minimal like Mark mentioned. And so that’s really what we end up doing all the time.

Mark Ilagan:

Can I add to that, Dr. Brandes? Because I know we’re both believers in the ALARA principle, right? So when it comes to children, we’re very cautious when we’re talking about exposure to children. So those things have to come into play and be careful with that. Of course, you’re not going to cone beam all kids just because a cone beam. So we have to be careful with that. However, this is what I’ve seen, Bill, this is interesting. I see doctors whose get cone beam first, will do a 2D panel which is great sometimes. It has the answer that they’re looking for, the information that they’re looking for.

But often I see them not only taking the 2D panel, but they’ll take an additional cone beam on top of that because they want to see more. They’ll say, “Oh, I wish I could see that a little better.” So they take an additional image. What would be better in some cases, not all cases, would it be better taking a 3D from the get-go and still getting a decent pan out of it or taking a 2D then taking a CBCT?

Dr. Robert Brandes:

Right. Along those lines too, I like to say, yeah, of course kids, we always got to be sensitive to exposing kids and the necessity of that. I do think though that we’ve always had no problem justifying an FMX on a new patient exam, for example. That’s been the standard since we’ve been in a school, whether that was a film FMX or a digital FMX. And today we have the ability to utilize this technology to get a lot more information as a baseline even with somebody that doesn’t have any pathology and will have a baseline image, a 3D image to be able to compare back to.

So I think that part of the success of making this work in practice is not only feeling comfortable with utilization of the technology, but also figuring out how to correctly implement this into the office so it becomes an everyday thing, not just an isolated case for a third molar extractions or an implant case because the richness again is in the diagnostic information.

Bill Neumann:

So Mark, you alluded to the fact. You didn’t know the exact percentage, but it’s something like 10% or maybe a little bit higher as far as clinicians that are using CBCT currently. So if we look at that, and Dr. Brandes, it’d be great to get your feedback too. When you made the change, was it intimidating at first? Why are we only at 10%? And it’s been out for probably more than that, more than a dozen years, 15 years, 20 years maybe. So why has the uptick been so slow?

Dr. Robert Brandes:

Not being a salesperson, my idea about that is real simple and I sort of alluded to it and I think that the industry went after the low hanging fruit and that was implantology. If I had to sit back and let’s say that I’m just a restorative dentist or I’m just only doing restorative dentistry, it would be very hard to justify cone beam from that standpoint.

It also would be pretty tough if I only did a couple implants a month, for example, to say, “Well if I really need that, I can always send that out to an outside imaging center.” I think largely just because the industry didn’t know what they have, I still don’t think a lot of them understand what they have from a diagnostic treatment plan standpoint.

So a lot of the educational things that I do that’s where I really tend to focus is on what I call 3D every day because I think that this equipment can be easily utilized in a correct ethical clinical manner on lots of patients every day. And the benefit is definitely improved care for the patient.

Bill Neumann:

Mark, any feedback on that?

Mark Ilagan:

Yes. I believe doctors are scared of technology. Some of them are not comfortable with it. Let’s say they have been practicing for a number of years without it. Do they see the benefits of bringing in something that is high tech like this if they’re not computer savvy? So we know some computers scare some people. So what we have seen recently is the advent of AI and those applications working into the CBCT world, so it’s more usable, so it’s less intimidating.

I think not only the intimidation of technology, it may be the cost too. So cone beam used to be much higher when it first came out. When Dr. Brandes bought his first cone beam, I roughly know how much. Didn’t I sell that to you? I’m not sure if I did.

Dr. Robert Brandes:

I think you did. And I have no buyer’s remorse.

Mark Ilagan:

The cost was significantly higher. Today, it’s not as intimidating as far as a price. It is roughly the price of a high-end 2D machine back then, right? That’s roughly where the cost is today for a cone beam, entry level cone beam. And it’s easier to use and the resources are there. So there has been an increase. I have seen an increase in CBCT sales because it is becoming part of the norm in dentistry, but it’s taken 13, 15 years. [inaudible 00:23:38]

Dr. Robert Brandes:

I think it’s really back to what I said initially, Bill, and I think that the capability of the technology was way undersold. Once I had the technology that’s why my concerns about the return on my investment and so forth just vaporized because I could use the technology all the time in lots of different applications and extractions and evaluating endodontic lesions, all kinds of other things. And then I also had a good baseline.

So it’s like any investment in anything in our practice. You’ve got to use it in order to make it worthwhile. And there’s some people that really haven’t learned that in the process of their training and still only use it occasionally just in implant cases. And that’s like having a really nice sports car never getting out of first gear. You can decide how fast you want to go and what areas of dentistry you want to focus on, but you have that capability right there with you and there’s no reason not to utilize it.

I also will say that once you have this technology and mastered and it does have a fairly quick learning curve, it really makes clinical practice a lot more interesting and a lot more dynamic that patients appreciate and engage these images. Patients like technology. Even though US dentists might be intimidated by the next ripple. I think there’s always the doubt about, “Well, it works for other people, but is it going to work for me.”

But patients like technology as you see in phones and cars and other things. And so they readily engage this technology at least as a consumer. So you want to format that you can display these images in front of patients and have them look at them with you at the same time. It’s really a fun and interactive thing and it’s made practice a lot richer for me.

It’s not just another year of doing the same thing. I also can see a lot of limitations of a lot of the treatments that we’ve done in the past once you can see some things in 3D also.

Bill Neumann:

Yeah. What’s really interesting is we did a procurement survey not too long ago, about a month ago. All sizes a group. One to 10 practices in the large groups. We had 12 questions and one of the questions was when buying a product, what’s the most important? I mean, we rank it from one to whatever. A lot of people think group practices are all driven by costs. Right? And cost is certainly important, but we looked at patient satisfaction, clinician satisfaction as being very high up there.

We looked at the quality of the product as actually being number one. Training and education was higher than the price. So price was number four on the list. It was still important. So kind of listening, going back to the conversation we had, you talked about the price coming down. So the cost has come down. We’ve talked about really from a patient perspective, the patients are interested. They’re actually engaged with a 3D image more so than a 2D image. They understand it more. So they’re engaged there.

So let’s talk about the education and that training component because that’s really key to getting dentist comfortable using this and maybe using it for treatment planning and diagnosis. So let’s talk a little bit about the education. And Dr. Brandes, you talked about it was 3D every day, right?

Dr. Robert Brandes:

Right.

Bill Neumann:

So let talk a little bit about that.

Dr. Robert Brandes:

Sure. I’ve been involved in doing specific cone beam education for dentists for over 10 years now. I’ve probably educated in small groups of usually 25, 30 doctors or less, about a thousand dentists in cone beam. And the focus is really around a couple things. First, simple navigation and that has a lot to do with the software and learning how to navigate and function in it.

That can be done pretty effectively in just about a day long course and to the point where they’re ready to go out and really take on things. The learning curve I consider a fairly fast one. The second part of that is really learning, and I alluded to is to learning how to implement this into your practice. When are you going to use this and how are you going to use this, and how does that fit in your practice flow?

Everybody has a little bit different flow to doing exams and stuff, but this is pretty easy to build in. It doesn’t require a lot of additional time. It doesn’t make an examination take a lot longer. As a matter of fact, you’re already sort of starting to work on the case presentation part of it while you’re doing the exam. So it flows well. But I think that to really maximize the return on investment and so forth, then you really have to learn how to utilize it.

Those are short discussions and I think people can still figure out how to customize and use the features of this based on their style and their decision-making progress and so forth like Mark was talking about. So it has flexibility. It doesn’t have to be done that way. And the other thing about the training I think is… Or any product too, is how easy is it for the staff to use?

In other words, with cone beam is do you have a product that the staff can use easily and obtain a good image to start out with before we even talk about what we’re going to do with that image? This Air Techniques certainly has that with the laser alignments and other things that make patient positioning good. And it’s easy to obtain a good scan.

You can upload that in about two minutes. A lot of the original stuff used to take seven, eight minutes to upload. So you had to do song and dance where you’re waiting for an image. You don’t have to do that any longer. But I think, there’s two components. One is learning how to navigate and the sub context to that too at the same time is of course is learning how to evaluate those images from a clinical standpoint.

We’re very well versed in radiology, so you’re just getting better looks at things that you’ve seen in the past. So that’s pretty simple. And then so learning how to navigate through volumes and understanding what’s going on there. And then the second part is the implementation part.

Then for the DSO format then it really comes down to training the trainers and we have a program for that too. Certainly any individual doctor could seek out this education on their own, but in the larger groups in that practice setting, then it would be training trainers to be able to do this with larger groups and so forth.

Bill Neumann:

That’s great. So let’s talk about… Everybody loves to talk about new technology. So what are you seeing out there when it comes to imaging? I’d just love to see where things are now compared to where you were 12 years ago. You talked about just the upload speeds going from seven or eight minutes to two minutes. But tell me about some new things that you’re seeing and using.

Dr. Robert Brandes:

Sure. The nice thing about this technology is that all of these advances primarily have been software upgrades. So for example, it’s better computing power and so forth. That makes us be able the uploaded image a lot quicker. The quality of the images is getting better, but the quality has always been pretty good. We’re figured out how to subtract out a lot of metal artifacts, for example, that was a mathematical algorithm, but the hardware of cone beam is fairly simple and really the elegance of it is in software.

The nice thing about it, even though my scanner is 12 years old, it has the same capabilities of all the scanners that are being sold today for the most part because it’s just upgrades in software. So it hasn’t become antiquated unlike so many other things that have cameras and other components. It’s pretty bulletproof that way. But what we’ve seen technology-wise is what Mark was mentioning and that is a lot more artificial intelligence is being added in.

So for example, with the Air Techniques unit, it has a thing called Clear Pan where it can optimize and focus the panoramic image through artificial intelligence to make sure that all the relevant structures are included in the focal trough. So when the image loads up in focus right off the bat, when you present it to the patient. You don’t have to spend time trying to optimize the panoramic curve. At the same time it can use AI to mark the nerve.

So that right there, you have that right in front of you as a clinician without really having to touch anything. You’re ready to just start into your examination and presentation at the same time. So the same thing has progressed some on the implant side. There’s lots more AI coming into ideal implant placement and integration with CAD cam at the same time. So these are all software up upgrades rather than hardware upgrades.

So it’s made it so that the original unit that I bought hasn’t become antiquated. There’s not the evolution like there has been in so many other products.

Bill Neumann:

So Mark, tell us a little bit. We really haven’t touched much on Air Techniques and the product itself, which is great. I appreciate it. We got a really great 101 on CBCT versus 2D and also how important education is and really how it’s evolved in the past 10, 15 years. Tell us about Air Techniques and the prime unit that you have.

Mark Ilagan:

Yeah. The Air Techniques ProVecta Prime 3D unit is manufactured in Germany. What we have done there is really focused on the software. As Dr. Brandes mentioned, we know that image quality has come to a point much like digital cameras. I can’t tell what’s taken from a Canon what’s taken from a Nikon with a digital camera. It’s really the software being used to process it.

The AI comes into play which answers the education and the training question as well because the panoramic curve is optimized. During reconstruction. So it’s actually automatic once it shows up, it’s already optimized. And the nerve, inferior alveolar canals already mapped out during reconstruction. Again, that’s the first thing that’s shown on the first screen, first picture.

A doctor doesn’t have to take those extra steps, which means because a doctor doesn’t have to take all those extra steps, they don’t have to spend that much time training on it. So previously, I was spending four hours chairside with the doctor to show them how to map out, navigate and map out that inferior alveolar canal using the MPR reviews, the axial views, and sagittal views to get it lined up so you could see everything.

I counted how many clicks it took to map out a nerve without any mistakes. A minimum of 30 clicks just to map out the inferior alveolar canal on one side. So it depends again on the software. So what does that mean? That means there’s less training. Let’s see if the AI did its job so we could verify it. One doctor I spoke to recently said that she did not care for artificial intelligence. She rather say augmented intelligence because it’s really assisting, it’s not replacing the clinician’s intelligence, which is accurate. I actually agree with that.

So it’s much faster for the doctor to sit down. And Bill, if the doctor’s just wanting to drop in a virtual implant, Dr. Brandes talks about it as a virtual surgery. If a doctor just wants to do that and see if an implant fits in a certain area, with our system, it’s as little as five clicks. That means according to clinicians, that saves them 15 to 20 minutes a patient because the software and the technology behind it has done a lot of the heavy lifting. So what does that mean?

That means less time on the software. As much as I love the software and I think it’s cool, I don’t want clinicians spending time on the software. I want doctors doing dentistry, taking care of their patients. I think that’s where we’re we win and I think that’s where we make a difference.

Bill Neumann:

Well, this has been a great conversation. Any final words from you, Dr. Brandes and Mark? And then we’ll wrap everything up.

Dr. Robert Brandes:

No, I think that the nice thing about the software too is it also interfaces with any kind of other technology, whether that’s 3D printing, whether that’s CAD cam imaging and stuff. And so you want a system that the software can go across different platforms and this certainly can do that too. So to me, this is very easy to be passionate about this subject because I think it is something that I engage with every day that I practice and I can’t imagine not having it.

It’s once you have GPS, it’s hard to imagine looking at a map and does it help to know how to read a map? Yeah, but once you have more information, it’s hard to go back to less information.

Bill Neumann:

That’s a great point. Mark Ilagan, any final thoughts?

Mark Ilagan:

I can’t think of any. Thanks for asking good questions. The only thing I could add is technology has changed for the GP. You know GPs are printing surgical guides in-house now, right? They’re doing as much as they want in-house or as little as they want. We have doctors that just want to measure or just look at an image for diagnostic purposes to doctors who want to mill out, or not mill out, print out surgical guides now in-house for a low cost same day.

So it really depends on where the doctor wants to go. And I think the best suggestion I have for anybody looking at CBCT is much like somebody who is shopping for a vehicle, right? Shopping online for a car is great if you’re looking for specifications, maybe some features other people’s reviews, but nothing will replace a true test drive. I suggest getting your hands on the software and playing around with it. See, if it’s easy for you to use and something you will enjoy in your practice. If it’s something that’s going to cause you pain, don’t buy it.

Bill Neumann:

Mark, if people want to test drive, how can they get in touch with you?

Mark Ilagan:

They can email me at mark, M-A-R-K dot Ilagan, I-L-A-G-A-N-@airtechniques.com.

Bill Neumann:

Okay. Dr. Brandes, if anybody wants to reach out to you and has any questions.

Dr. Robert Brandes:

My email is Perio, P-E-R-I-O, Assoc A-S-S-O-C. perioassoc@earthlink.net. And I’m happy to respond to anybody’s questions and if need be, I’m happy to arrange a phone call too if somebody has specific questions they want to follow up on.

Bill Neumann:

Excellent. Thank you, Dr. Brandes. Mark Ilagan, thank you so much from Air Techniques. What we’ll do is we’ll drop those email addresses in the show notes as well, so you’ll have access to those. But great conversation, learned a lot. Lot of fun. It doesn’t have to be scary anymore. Right? It’s not just for implantology diagnosis and treatment. So we learned quite a bit. So thanks, gentlemen. This is the Group Dentistry Now Show and I’m Bill Neumann. We’ll see you all next time.