Dentistry as Art
By Steven Pigliacelli, CDT
Vice President, Marotta Dental Studio

When you think of the Masters—Da Vinci, Picasso, Michelangelo, Matisse—your mind is filled with exquisite pictures of beautiful women and bucolic landscapes. To become a true master, an artist must have the best tools and the finest materials— quality paints, sensitive brushes, a clean canvas. But those alone will do nothing without the spark of genius that makes his paintings come alive.

Dentistry is no different. To create a smile worthy of the Mona Lisa, dentist and technician must work together with the best tools and the finest materials. But even more than that, they must have that spark of creativity, the intuition of a master, to make porcelain and metal come alive.

That’s just what we do here everyday at Marotta. We put together our skills as scientists and craftspeople, artists and artisans, to become masters of the art of
dentistry.

Titanium Casting and Implants
By Steven Pigliacelli, CDT
Vice President, Marotta Dental Studio

Titanium has been a paradox for the dental community. On the one hand, its special properties make it ideal for use in dental prosthetics. On the other, those very same properties have made it especially challenging to work with. The highly individual processing necessary in the crafting of bridges, cast models and implants required new casting methods. Finally, those methods are now in place, allowing us to bring you all the benefits of titanium through a precision-crafted system that results in top-quality prosthetics. Continued on next page

Marotta Dental Studio is proud to announce its relocation to an expanded, state-of-the-art facility.

On The Move

The dental industry is constantly changing. Emerging techniques require new systems, new machines, and new expertise. We’ve always been at the cutting edge of this development, and we will continue to be the industry leader in utilizing the most up-to-date materials and perfecting the newest techniques. Our newest systems include a laser welding system which possesses the most powerful and accurate laser on the market today. We have a titanium casting system which enables us to construct custom titanium abutment posts, titanium implant frames and titanium crown and bridge frameworks. We have perfected two porcelain systems that easily bond to titanium while maintaining high esthetic results. The Procera system can also be used to construct titanium custom abutments and all-titanium copings as well as all-ceramic crowns. Continued on page 4

Titanium was first discovered in 1791. It wasn’t really utilized, however, until the 1950s when it was employed for the production of lightweight machinery and weapons. Since then, some of the uses for titanium have included airplane engines and frames, satellites, missiles, eyeglass frames, mountain-bikes and cookware, all because of its incredible light weight and super strength (it’s three times stronger than steel). Today, titanium is a trendy product as well as a useful one. Its lustrous beauty makes it ideal for jewelry. There’s even a building completely covered in titanium—the Guggenheim Museum in Bilboa, Spain.

Medical Miracles

The medical industry has been using titanium very successfully for years. It’s the perfect material for artificial joints, bone pins and replacements. It’s also being used in heart valves, pacemakers and hearing devices. The dental industry began using titanium in the 1960s when Per Branemark discovered the biocompatible bonding principles for titanium and bone. But recent strides in titanium processing promise to make it more valuable than ever before in dental prosthetics.

Why Titanium?

Titanium has ten advantages over other precious metals in use today:
1. Biocompatibility. Titanium is able to withstand a myriad of environmental changes while remaining inert. Testing has shownit to be extremely corrosion resistant. In fact, it performed significantly better than gold alloys in corrosion testing. It resistance to corrosion is based on its high affinity for oxygen which causes it to immediately form a micro-oxide surface layer upon exposure at room temperature. This thin membrane is a super-strong protective shield that keeps the titanium from interacting with surrounding materials, even with existing dentures, making it an excellent choice for allergic individuals. And because titanium is pure and not an alloy, holistic patients can receive titanium crowns with no worry.

2. Superior Lightness. With a density of 4.56/cm, titanium is one of the lightest metals available. It has only a quarter of the weight of gold alloys normally used in dentistry. The result is feather-weight dentures which are extraordinarily comfortable for your patients to wear.

3. Accurate Fit. Our custom titanium abutments will precisely match your patient’s specific needs. We can join the machined interface exactly with the implant-bearing surface and customize your copings to almost any specified height, diameter, taper or angulation to provide a perfect fit. And the extremely low contraction of titanium means minimum edge-gap dimensions are achievable.

4. Superior Appearance. The workability of titanium makes itpossible to develop the ideal emergence profile and to position the finish line at the exact location for optimal esthetics. Its color makes it the ideal choice as well since it blends perfectly with its surroundings.

5. Low Thermal Conductivity. The thermal conductivity of titanium is 13.5 times less than that of gold and 3.2 times less thanCoCr alloys. This means less irritations of the pulpa which can sometimes be caused by gold alloys. Patients can drink warm or cold liquids without fear of temperature shock.

6. Neutral Taste. Unlike other metals, titanium is absolutely taste-neutral. It has no metallic aftertaste and will not affect your patients’ enjoyment of food and drink.

7. Superior Strength. Titanium displays superior resistance to mastication stress. It performs beautifully with no worry of stress fractures.

8. High X-Ray Translucency. Titanium is the only dental restorative metal that is X-ray radiolucent. This allows the dentist to clearly see the pulp chamber under a cemented crown and to diagnose secondary caries without removing the fixed prosthesis.

9. Universal Use. Titanium is the only pure metal which can be used to craft all dental prosthesis. Crowns, bridges, inlays, superstructures, model castings and implants can all be made from titanium. A patient could be treated using only one metal, thereby eliminating all the chemical and physical reactions caused by the contact of different metals in the mouth.

10. Economical. Titanium’s high strength-to-weight ratio, translates into more castings per pennyweight than semi-precious, noble or high noble alloys.

Call today to find out more about why titanium is right for you and your patients.

MENLO PARK, CA — Alternative medicine, once viewed as a foreign or counter-culture activity, is now part of mainstream American life.

In fact, most any dentist can tell you about the popularity of alternative therapies by the number of questions they get regarding the safety of amalgams and fluoride, as well as interest in other alternative therapies that impact the dental office.

Who’s Going Alternative?

Most Americans who have tried some form of alternative therapy or treatment for their medical conditions have found the remedies effective, according to a nationally projectable study from InterSurvey.

The survey found that two-thirds of Americans have tried at least one form of alternative therapy or treatment, and that herbal medicines, chiropractic service and massage are the most popular forms of alternative medicine. More than one-third of the respondents noted they have tried all three of the above.

“Physicians need to look at this survey and accept that a majority of their own patients are seeking alternative therapies,” says Andrew Schiller, MD, a mainstream and alternative healthcare practitioner, and a health expert at MDchoice.com. “It would be wise for all ‘mainstream’ physicians to hurry up and become intimately familiar with the indications for each type of alternative therapy.”

“More and more people are coming to realize that many alternative
health care treatments are safe and effective,” says Jerome McAndrews, DC, the national spokesperson for the American Chiropractic Association. McAndrews agrees that InterSurvey's findings are consistent with other data that show the number of visits to alternative health care providers is exceeding the number of visits to traditional medical practitioners.

The poll was recently conducted via the web and was based upon a representative sample of 1148 adults. Half of those responding reported taking vitamin supplements in the two weeks before the survey, and described their health as either good or excellent. Twenty-three percent reported taking herbs, while 26 to 42% reported taking non-prescription painkillers such as aspirin and Tylenol. This finding raises an interesting question: why are healthy people taking painkillers? “Our culture has conditioned too many people to 'pop' painkillers at the slightest twinge of discomfort, despite growing evidence that many of these drugs have potentially dangerous side effects,” says McAndrews.

Treatments That Work

Massage, yoga and acupuncture rated highest for total effectiveness among survey respondents, with chiropractic service, massage and acupuncture considered to be more effective than traditional medical alternatives. While most people who have tried various alternative medicine options find them at least somewhat effective,

Less than half of the respondents found hypnosis to be beneficial.

In addition, the survey found that women are more likely than men to have tried almost all of the alternative medicine treatments, except for chiropractic service, which is slightly more popular with men than women. Also of interest: although one-third of those interviewed have tried herbal medicines (38%), chiropractic (37%), massage (35%) and meditation (14%), less than 10% of them have tried acupuncture, yoga, homeopathy, hypnosis, Chinese medicine and Tai Chi.

“Twelve years ago, when I first completed my residency in family practice, less than 10% of patients showed an interest in alternative medicine,” says Ray Sahelian, MD, a Los Angeles physician who writes about natural supplements. “Now, more than half prefer to first try a natural method of therapy in place of a pharmaceutical drug.”

Why Try It?

The most important reason people try alternative medicine is the recommendation of a friend or family member. Sixty-two percent of the respondents cited this reason, according to the survey. Other reasons mentioned include: traditional treatments were not working (28%); looking for a complement to a health routine (23%); recommendation from a doctor (22%); and information from a newspaper, magazine, or Internet source (20%).

For the third of the respondents who have not tried any alternative medicine, most cited the reason that traditional medicines work well for them. Other reasons are safety concerns and lack of insurance coverage.

Used courtesy of E-dental.com

Titanium is a popular choice with patients who want an
alternative to high gold-silver and palladium alloys. It is the
most biocompatible restoration available.

The InCeram system allows us to make all-porcelain ceramic bridges while the Gramm GES™ system produces the most esthetic gold core ceramic crowns. We have produced nitrogen processed implant provisionals that last more than two years in the mouth. We have experimented and researched all the latest material on and off the market today to achieve the most accurate and precise castings possible.

In keeping with our commitment to searching out and perfecting the latest systems and techniques, we have developed research facilities through which we can work with medical, dental and cranial-facial prosthetics. We have affiliated ourselves with the most renowned surgeons and orthopedic doctors in the country. Lenny Marotta is now a Visiting Clinical Professor for Manufacturing Research at the School for Engineering at the State University of New York, Farmingdale. We have access to all their facilities to research and produce new technology for both the dental and medical fields. Titanium is a viable product in both these fields and we are experimenting with new
applications for this material every day.

We can accommodate your patients’ custom shade needs in our comfortable, private shade room. And our conference facilities can help make comprehensive case planning easier.

We are excited to be growing large enough to fill all your technical needs. Yet our commitment to providing the personalized service we’re known for remains. At Marotta, we intend to provide the best of both worlds: The latest technology and materials geared toward your individual needs.