California Dental Association Convention, “The Art and Science of Dentistry” at the Anaheim Convention Center in Anaheim, Ca

This is always a fun event as I get to see all my colleagues and talk shop.  Throughout the convention there are many continuing education courses offered reinforcing subjects and increasing knowledge.  This year I focused on esthetics, including facial esthetics, anterior tooth esthetics, and porcelain fracture.  These were excellent refresher courses to ensure quality and beautiful restorations in the front teeth (aka the sexy six).  There are many proportions in our face that are innate for humans to find esthetically pleasing. One that I find interesting is the golden proportion 1:1.618.  This proportion is seen all over our face, one example is from the bottom of our chin to the midline of the mouth (1.618) and from the midling of our mouth to the bottom of our nose (1).  The picture below shows other proportions that we use to diagnose problems in the bite or TMJ.

 

I also attended a course on acute pain and methods to treat symptoms.  The most interesting part of this lecture was an analysis of some new studies showing that NSAIDS (like ibprofen and Tylenol) are more effective at reducing pain than opioids (like Percocet and Vicoden).  Most patients want an opiate after surgery believing that this will give them the most effective pain relief when, on the contrary, an over the counter drug is more potent.  Within these studies, using two over the counter drugs is even more effective.  Tylenol and Advil work in two different areas of the body (direct hypothalamic action and cyclooxygenase inhibitor reducing prostaglandins respectively) allowing them to work in tandem to produce the highest level of pain relief.