Growth is healthy. It’s good for the soul. Even difficult or challenging growth, if we let it, can help us gain experience, become smarter and wiser, make us stronger, and ultimately better. However, many people avoid change, viewing it as a negative or uncomfortable experience, or simply as something that “happens to them.” I choose to see it differently. I believe in seeking after change, be it positive. In fact, in my own life, and as it applies to Ultradent, I’ve always subscribed to the philosophy: “Driven by gorgeous change shalt have no top; if it were not so, mediocrity would be our lot.” To put it simply, constant progression—constant improvement—is the goal.

Although she’s only been with Ultradent for just over a year and a half, Ashleigh Speer, the company’s country manager over Australia and New Zealand, says that Ultradent “feels like home.” Yet even though her job may feel like home, she’s certainly far from her native home of the United States. A graduate of the University of Alabama, Ashleigh has taken life “down-under” by the horns, staying busy with work and managing to fit in some professional networking and play when she can. After all, who wouldn’t want to take advantage of the landscapes Ashleigh covers, which she calls “very unique and beautiful.”

There is nothing one can do well, in a quality sense, when it comes to operative dentistry in the presence of bleeding. That is why I believe Ultradent’s tissue management line—most notably, ViscoStat® or Astringedent® X (in combination with the Metal Dento-Infuser® tip)—to undoubtedly be the most versatile products that we offer. They’re not only needed, but they’re absolutely paramount to the success of the greatest amount of dental procedures that a clinician performs.

Since its creation, the Opalescence® Tooth Whitening System has led the way in innovation and continuous improvement in the whitening market and shows no sign of stopping, as it remains the leader in professional tooth whitening today. Here’s a list of 20 reasons why dentists around the world choose Opalescence over any other system again and again. Check it out!

Many variables affect the final outcome of a restoration—be it technical difficulty, the quality of the preparation, the chosen composite resin used, etc. However, the impact of the success and longevity of a restoration’s cure is often ignored. Achieving a predictable, high-quality cure every time is critical to providing patients with the best care possible. Proximity (of the light) to the restoration, type of light being emitted, along with beam collimation and uniformity all influence the quality of any cure.

“My favorite thing about my job is the freedom that working in Research & Development (R&D) gives me to be creative and research things. Certainly, it has to be disciplined, but it doesn’t mean I have a script for every day,” says Peter Allred, Ultradent’s Technology Director over Formulations. Thanks to that culture of creativity and the freedom Ultradent gives its R&D team to try new things, the size and product offering of Ultradent has grown vastly since Peter first arrived. “When I started at Ultradent, I think we had 75–80 people who worked here. Now we have over a thousand! We made Opalescence® once a week—now we make four or five batches a day. Usually we’d make one or two other things, like Ultra-Etch, once a week too. We were a very small operation. There were only 10 people filling syringes and now we have automated machines to do that.” He continues, “We would go to Dr. Fischer’s house once a week or so to fill up two containers of glycerin, which is, aside from water, the most used ingredient in any of our products—and now we receive that in tanker trucks 500 gallons at a time, at several shipments a week. The scales have changed dramatically!”