First successful year of Dental Study Club!
It is our first-year anniversary since the idea of associating dentists with genuine interest in the field and the ambition to progress in it has fallen on fertile ground. There are two young dentists behind this idea and its realization, MDDr. Júlia Bondor and MDDr. Maroš Čižmár.
The Dental Study Club is a concept of regular meetings that take place throughout the year in Bratislava, Slovakia. The meeting program consists of watching online seminars from different areas of dentistry and evidence-based dentistry education. It also creates space for asking questions and searching for answers, enriching discussion in a friendly environment, exchanging experience, sharing tips, tricks and our own know-how.
Within the previous meetings, we have drawn into many areas of dentistry, starting with conservative dentistry, dentoalveolar surgery, endodontics, and prosthetics.
At the first meeting we dealt with one of the most frequently occurring but also the most problematic procedure in conservative dentistry: class II distal composite restorations. We discussed the right material selection, what matrix systems are currently available and which ones to use in specific situations. We discussed how to make good contact points and also talked about deep margin elevation.
On our next meetings of the Dental Study Club, this time on a surgical topic, we dealt with how to administer anesthesia so that it’s painless, what types of anesthesia are available and how to extract a tooth atraumatically. We mapped current trends in the treatment of dry socket, the most common postextraction complication. We also dealt with various extraction techniques, surgical instrumentation – forceps and luxators and other points of interest from daily common dental surgery.
The subject of the following Dental Study Club meetings was endodontics. In the area of endodontics, there are particularly many questions, different opinions and uncertainties that can be addressed: the proper creation of the access cavity, gaining access to the root canals, types of mechanical shaping and obturation, irrigation protocols, indications of temporary canal dressings and many others. Therefore, it was not enough for just one meeting to cover this many themes. We discussed the principles of cleaning and shaping, the importance of hand tools in the era of endomotors, why and how to bend tools. We have talked about the difference between rotary and reciprocal files, and we have also mentioned the complications that this demanding tooth-saving procedure, endodontics, can cause. We also talked about ultrasonic tip, the heating of NaOCl, how to achieve tug back and other endo-related topics.
In direct follow-up to endodontics, we focused on post-endodontic treatment at our next meetings. While watching the webinar from Gianluca Plotini we discussed the indications of different tratment options on specific clinical cases, why it is so important to have the right ferrule when dealing with postendodontic build-up. We have also talked about the indications for using FRC posts.
The theme of our last meeting before the summer break was prosthodontics. One hour long video of modified vertical preparation from Dr. Massimo Mazza with a commentary filmed under microscope enriched us not only with the crown preparation technique but also with the soft tissues remodelation. It showed us how to properly make a temporary crown and how to use teflon to make a proper impression so that nothing surprises us in the final work.
After the summer break, at the first meeting of the second year of the Dental Study Club, we focused again on endodontics – 3D root canal obturation. After introductory theoretical part about the advantages and disadvantages of various obturation methods, prof. Gambarini in his webinar showed us how to do 3D obturation with warm gutta-percha step-by-step.
At our next meeting on October 15, we will return to prosthodontics. First we will focus on the basic crown preparation of the frontal teeth and then we will learn how to decide where to place the crown margin.
This year we will try to continue with bringing interesting topics and quality clinically oriented webinars from relevant experts. Once again, we will be glad to welcome both the old familiar faces who please us with their regular attendance at our meetings, as well as newcomer dentists and dental students. We hope for them to enrich the discussion and gain new information and inspiration on how to move forward in dentistry. Up-to-date information about planned meetings can be found on Facebook Dental Study Club Bratislava.
Our goal is to create a community of dentists who are constantly striving to make progress in their daily practice. Values such as mutual support, patient-centered care and a positive mindset are our own and therefore everyone whom our idea addresses is welcomed.