Good morning ya hand gods,

Welcome to the influx of new readers this week-thanks for joining us. If you don’t know how things work around here…this is a two-way conversation.

So if you have suggestions or feedback-our inbox is open. Reply directly to this email.

Here’s today’s good word:

• ⌚How long do your composites survive? Give yourself some credit, it’s better than you think.

• ☕Coffee Break. Older generations always complaining and busted iPhone myths.

• 🦠Trivia Night. An antibiotic trivia update you need to remember.

So you just placed that #19-DO restoration…

But your patient asks you a question.

Your palms get sweaty, knees weak, arms are heavy…

And you say-

Correct. There are a lot of factors to consider.

But, let’s say we studied hundreds of thousands of posterior composite restorations

…and when we say “we”, we mean not actually us.

It was actually a group of very smart people from these dental schools👇

And they came up with a nice summarized number of median survival for posterior composites based on a huge dataset👇

with those >700k restorations coming from over 200k patients.

Yup, HUGE sample size.

So…we won’t bury the lead.

(Even though we ARE burying it in a trivia question🤣)

Not sure?

Here’s a little hint:

when we asked this question a few weeks ago, the majority of you UNDERESTIMATED survival time…

…which makes us turn to our motivation of the day:

💪💪You’re a good dentist and your posterior composites (apparently) survive longer than you think. Give yourself some credit 👊👊

Who knew that we were gonna to turn into David Goggins for dentists?

(P.S…if you want some motivation this morning to run through a brick wall. That video above is your source👆)

Alright…we back…

But, obviously there are factors that influence success rates

…like…

Which is not necessarily ground-breaking.

It makes sense that…

-on average, for 14.5 years to be exact.

And then a 2-surface restoration a little less.

and well, you guessed it…a 3 or more surface restoration…even less…

Pretty logical.

But other things may be not so obvious

Like premolar composites surviving (on average) longer:

…or another interesting tidbit-which surprised us.

So we’ll ask your opinion again…

Kudos to you if you got that right…

Because we wouldn’t have guessed the 10-year-old would be rubbing his composite survival time in the face of grandpa-

(Editor note: But, hey maybe we’re just dumb)

And for all other ages…it’s somewhere in between.

Plus, some other things that decrease survival rates:

• 📉History of endo

• 📉Restoration that includes the interproximal surface

And some things that were found to NOT influence survival:

• 🚺Gender (some lit in the past said that resins last longer in females)

• 💵Insurance status

So a whole bunch of factors.

But are these numbers helpful?…Maybe.

On the other hand…

-Are knowing these numbers worthy of your knighting as a dental nerd…definitely yes.

So if that 72 year old patient, with a large 4 surface resin and recurrent decay, sits down in your dental chair-

-at LEAST you know you can sent expectations that the restoration might not last forever.

Coffee Break

Some links to get you through until your next hygiene check

• 🕰️Puts things in Perspective. Ever complained about the younger generation? You’re not alone. Apparently it’s been happening throughout history. 

• 📱iPhone Myths...Busted. Including closing background apps and saving your phone with rice.

• 💵Property taxes killing your wallet? The ranking of highest and lowest taxes in the US.

• 🕹️We didn’t have this in high school. A Florida high school is dropping 500k on an esports lab….and it looks more advanced than most dental practices.

Trivia Crack

A few weeks ago we talked about how one oral surgeon got sued for prescribing a once very popular antibiotic.

So here’s a trivia question to review some of the latest literature on antibiotic prescriptions:

Here’s a hint on what is NOT the correct answer:

Thanks for reading

Let us know how we did…

Luv u,

tipsy dentistry😘😘