Dental Instruments

The CBCT shows 6 mm of bone under the planned first-molar site. The sinus floor is flat, the membrane looks thin but healthy, and the patient does not want a lateral window. That is the case crestal sinus lift osteotomes were designed for, and it is also the case where a badly chosen osteotome set […]

A porcelain-fused-to-metal crown on a vital second premolar, cemented eight years ago with zinc phosphate, needs to come off intact because the patient wants it re-used as a provisional while a new one is milled. The margin is subgingival. There is no space for a slice cut. This is the case that decides whether your

A lower first molar arrives with the crown broken off at the gingival margin. There is nothing for a forceps beak to hold, the roots are divergent, and the patient has already had one failed attempt elsewhere. This is the case the Coupland elevator was built for — and the reason almost every oral surgery

Ask three dentists what a #23 is and you will get the same answer in a second. Ask them what a #88R does that a #53R does not, and the room goes quiet. The numbering system on American pattern extraction forceps is one of those conventions that everyone half-knows and almost nobody was formally taught

A clogged barrel in the middle of a class II restoration is one of those small failures that costs three minutes and a whole mix. The amalgam sets in the chamber, the plunger jams, and the assistant is triturating a fresh capsule while the isolation slowly degrades. Nine times out of ten the instrument is

A lower third molar, distoangular, half covered by bone. The incision is made, and the surgeon’s next thirty seconds decide how the next forty minutes go. Get a clean plane between periosteum and cortex on the first pass and the flap lifts as one sheet, retracts without tearing, and closes over sound bone at the