Using Dental Technology to Overcome Patient Fears

Monday, July 13, 2015

Using Dental Technology to Overcome Patient Fears

According to a Gallup Well-Being poll, about one in three U.S. adults say they did not visit the dentist at some point in the past 12 months.

Let’s break this down using data from the US Census Bureau: there are roughly 242 million adults in the US which means nearly 81 million people didn’t receive oral care last year. That is an enormous opportunity for the dental community. Literally billions of dollars in revenue are sitting on the table. The key question remains: how do you make your practice appealing to these 81 million people?

The first step in answering this is actually another question: Why aren’t people coming to the dentist? One of the primary factors is dental anxiety. According to the Dental Fears Research Clinic at the University of Washington Dental School and the Columbia University School of Dentistry, upwards of 50 million Americans avoid the dentist due to their fear of pain. While it is impossible to guarantee a 100% pain-free dental experience for everyone, there are measures dentists can take to help ease patients’ fears.

When thinking of the most intimidating dental tools, you don’t need to look any further than the anesthetic syringe and the drill. No patient loves getting local anesthetic injections.  Even stoic patients who don't fear "the shot" don't love that lingering numb feeling.  Given that the noise alone is enough to make some patients go running for the hills, minimizing the use of the handpiece provided another obvious opportunity for me to improve my patients’ experiences.

Patients were beginning to hear about erbium dental lasers and associate them with less painful procedures, so in 2008 I decided to add one to my practice. I soon had some startling realizations about the limitations of the technology. First, the analgesic effect wasn’t consistent and second, procedures took significantly longer with the laser which reduced efficiency in the practice. Due to this lack of predictability, I was using the dental laser on less than half of the hard-tissue procedures in my practice.

I didn’t want to ‘bait and switch’ my patients by promising them an experience I couldn’t regularly deliver, so eventually I limited operative use to small carious lesions.  Over time, I realized that if the laser didn’t meet patients’ expectations, it would erode the trust I’ve built, reduce the number of patient referrals, and therefore, my practice’s growth.

Thankfully, combating this issue was simple. I found a dental laser that delivered on its promise, Convergent Dental’s Solea CO2 laser.

Solea’s unique wavelength enables me to deliver virtually anesthesia-free and blood-free procedures to more than 90 percent of my patients. Removing the drill’s noise, sensation and requisite numbness has allowed me to virtually reinvent the patient experience at my office. With Solea, production and patient referrals have significantly increased. Not only are people less afraid of coming into my office, but I’m also able to perform multi-quadrant dentistry in a single visit because the dental laser doesn’t require me to use anesthesia in the majority of my procedures.

The Solea laser’s impact comes down to simple math. Reducing or eliminating anesthesia and bleeding saves time and discomfort and this has a dramatic effect on practice efficiency and the patient experience I can provide.

We can bring those 81 million people back to the dental chair if we focus on providing patients with exemplary experiences. A large percentage of these people are afraid of being hurt—both physically and emotionally—and it’s time that we convey that they have nothing to fear anymore.

For my practice, the Solea hard and soft tissue laser is giving me my fair share of this huge, untapped market, and giving my patients the experience they want and deserve.

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