With Christmas just a little more than two weeks away, perhaps you’ve finished picking out gifts for the special people in your life—now it’s time to wrap up the little details. Because the holidays have become synonymous with eating cookies, cakes, and sweets of every kind, here are a few stocking stuffer ideas that will help keep your loved ones’ smiles as happy as their tummies. Ultradent® Tooth Brushes With a comfortable grip and integrated tongue cleaner, Ultradent’s toothbrushes are effective in removing plaque and bacteria—providing gentle cleaning to the teeth and gums. They’re also available in a variety of colors, including red, purple, green, and blue.

When performing a root canal procedure, it’s imperative that after instrumentation, the clinician cleanses and disinfects the canal thoroughly with endodontic irrigants—even where instruments can’t reach. However, this can prove tricky, as irrigants must reach where they are needed without expressing beyond the bounds of the canal—breaking through apical tissues, potentially damaging healthy tissue. Dr. Dan Fischer says, “The basic concept of irrigation in endodontics is to get the smallest cannula down close to the apex, but shy of the foramen, and to irrigate from the bottom up. It is imperative to start from the bottom to prohibit trapping air in the canal—it is very difficult to displace an air bubble when you’re filling the canal from the top down. However, the deeper the canal, the more difficult it is to get the cannula down to the apical region of the tooth.”

“Nobody cares how much you know, until they know how much you care.”—Theodore Roosevelt For many people throughout the world, the beginning of November marks the beginning of the holiday season—beginning with Thanksgiving, followed by Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa (and any other way one chooses to celebrate the season), and ending with the ringing in of the New Year. Regardless of religion, I would say the marking characteristic of this season is care—care for our fellow man. Care also happens to be one of Ultradent’s five Core Values that we’ve chosen to uphold above all else here in the workplace. Seeing that it is the beginning of another joyous holiday season, I find it the perfect time to take a deeper look into the Core Value Care that we hold so dear.

These days, strategic, pin-pointed, and successful practice management has become as high a priority as providing quality, top-of-line patient care. That means making every second count without cutting any corners. Ultradent’s multi-award-winning curing light, VALO®, with its powerful 3-second cure feature, take both patient care and super-keen practice management to new heights, and has the numbers to prove it. In an interview years ago when low-intensity lights were more popular, Dr. Gordon Christensen estimated that a typical dental practice can save over $26,000 per year by switching from a low-intensity light to a high-intensity light like VALO. Some dentists are still using slower lights.1

Here’s a little something to remind you to share a smile with someone. Have a great Tuesday!

“While placing the UltraSeal XT hydro, you can literally see the sealant going into the pits and fissures! Day and night difference (from other sealants), and the use of the little light is a fun way to show the kids and parents and be able to check retention at their six-month appointments.” -Stephanie Vieau, Dental Assistant, Centreville, Virginia Choosing the right dental sealant and placing it properly can prove to be quite the challenge. So many sealants on the market fail to follow through on their promises-often peeling at the margins, popping off the tooth, and failing to prevent microleakage over time.

Here at Ultradent, our first leading core value is Integrity. We chose it very carefully. However, what many of you may not know is that before it was Integrity, it was Honesty. We changed that original core value from honesty to integrity because over the years at Ultradent, we’d seen many lovely, honest people that sadly, too often, didn’t also have courage to accompany that honesty. I believe that honesty plus courage equals human integrity. That’s where the two come together, and that’s why ultimately we chose Integrity over Honesty.

“The oral cavity is the gateway to health and/or disease, and the more we learn about dental hygiene, the more we learn about how it can affect the overall health of the rest of our bodies,” says Dr. Dan Fischer, president and CEO of Ultradent Products, Inc. He continues, “The hygienist is the front and center of that aspect of dentistry. It’s all about education and personal care.”