08 Jul The story of two brothers
Among the considerable number of dentists whose work fascinates me and whom I wholeheartedly support, stands out the brilliant personality of Dr. Pascal Magne whose works are fascinating replicas of healthy natural states. Dr. Pascal has a brother, a top dental technician named Michel and they both work in Los Angeles, USA. On March 9th 2021 he had an interesting conversation with his colleagues on his Instagram profile. It truly touched me with his honesty and fair attitude towards the permanent problem that burdens our profession, the doctor/technician or clinic/laboratory relationship. So continue reading if you haven’t already:
Pascal Magne: A succesful veneer results from a complex assembly. You hear lots of discussions about prep design, prep, no prep, vertiprep etc. Marginal quality is only one of the numerous elements in the success of Bonded Porcelain Restorations. The cornerstones of success of BPR are:
- Diagnostic approach, Additive Wax-up
- Mockup and Mockup-driven preparation
- Quality of resin bonded interphases, to porcelain, enamel and dentin (IDS)
- Master ceramist!!!
The equation is simple:
1 + 2 + 3 = 50% of success
4 = 50% of success
Total: 100%
XY: Not everyone is lucky to have a brother who is an extremly talented ceramist.
Pascal Magne: Believe me, it is not necessarily easier to have a brother ceramist. You all have a talented „brother“ out there. It is your responsibility to find him.
XY: I agree, but the dentist needs to forget just the price of the ceramics thinking to have the best.
Pascal Magne: What you pay is what you get.
As you can see, it is always the same story and always the same problems, but rarely do I come across this kind of opinion because a large part of the profession regards technicians as a necessary evil and an expense that should be avoided, not as an equal partner in the process of reconstruction. This situation is further exacerbated by the heated process of digitalization, which in most cases gives inferior end results but is progressing unstoppably, thus creating the impression that man is interchangeable. I believe that, although it offers all of us great help in making bases from new materials and facilitates many stages of work, in the final segments of reconstruction process, digitalization will never replace the human eye, skillful hand and playful imagination supported by experience as it is the very thing that the machine is lacking, turning human work into art.
In addition, the time calculation is missing in the above discussion. In my work with digital tools, I only use the eLAB protocol, starting from the analog print and model, finalising the work completely manually. In order to do this, it takes at least twice as long, sometimes even longer, than modern systems but I get the desired results that delight the clientele. Furthermore, when we talk about the price of work, then I think that my and anyone’s 25-year experience and top skills deserve an adequate reward. To begin with, perhaps in the range of a car mechanic’s hourly wage that we all pay without complaint for the maintenance of our expensive cars…