Communicating With The Dental Lab

Good morning, everybody. My name is Jim Brzezinski. I’m the manager here at the removal department at Shatkin F.I.R.S.T.® Dental Implant Laboratory. Welcome to the Monday Morning Minute. I asked my boss, Dr. Shatkin, if I could do this this week for a specific reason. And it starts with this lab slips. What we need from you folks out there is to fill out these things thoroughly. From the doctor’s name to the patient name, to the due dates, to what appliance you want, to the shades if it’s a male or a female.

All the things that are pertinent for me to make you an appliance that will be satisfactory to you and your patient. There’s an old saying I learned this a long time ago we’re a pharmacy to you guys. You’re doctors, just like a pharmacy is to a physician. You would not go out of your way just to send a prescription down to a Walgreens or a Rite-Aid without signing it, without looking at it, without being specific. In turn, you would be doing us a great service if you treated us the same way.

Also, if you can’t send study models of patients existing appliances, please take pictures or give me information that will be pertinent to me picking teeth, like the height, weight, shape of the face, I need all these things so I can pick the proper teeth. Study models are the best. Even if they hate their appliance that they’re wearing now, it helps us because we won’t pick those teeth. If they like what they’re wearing, we’ll try to match them the best we can. These are implant cases. They’re precision attachment cases.

So please take care when you’re taking your impressions. It’s the most important part of the beginning of our process. It’s like the seller on a house. We can’t build anything unless they’re correct. So if you take the time to look at them before they’re put in a box and sent to us, it’ll be of great help to us here. If you’re going to do algenic impressions, please pour the models twice. Obviously, you can’t send them to us through the mail. In a cold weather, the water will freeze, so don’t do that. Pour them twice. I prefer if you would do PBS impressions on everything. They’re more accurate, they’re more stable, and they won’t distort in the mail, in the heat or the cold. If you take impressions with implants in place, please do not pour your models send them to us and we will pour them.

There’s five of us here in this lab. We all have different jobs to do. But the most important job is when the impressions come here to be poured. That’s where Lydia steps in, and we go through a lot of these cases where the impressions just aren’t good enough. Another thing I would request, if you would, is in this cold weather, is not to use blue moose bite registration material. The stuff becomes brittle, it breaks apart and then we have a very difficult time here mounting cases. Because of that. If you could use a PVS impression material out of a gun or whatever, it’s pliable and we can fit it back onto the teeth easily.

Blue Moose is breaking apart and it’s not good, especially in the cold cases. Sit in the warehouse on weekends and things become distorted. This is where we’re going to have to call you back to take new impressions. And that’s something we don’t want to do. Number three, when we send you cases, finished dentures, bite blocks, Triumphs, they all come in these charcoal cases. As you can see, there are charcoal inserts in these. Please send them back that way.

When you try your case in, or you take your bite, put them back into these, close them up, and that’s how we should receive them back. Along with everything that we sent you, every single impression, model, tooth, card, whatever we send you, please send everything back to us with a new lab slip continuing the case on. I hope what I’ve expressed here will help you and us together. By taking the time to look at these things before they’re sent to us, I guarantee your work will be better exponentially. Thank you and have a good day.