Dental implant therapy and technology has been a big advancement for the dental industry leading to better patient outcomes as well as removing barriers to care.
Sundeep Rawal, DMD, is the senior vice president of implant support services at Chicago-based Aspen Dental. He recently joined the Becker's Dental + DSO Review podcast to discuss developments in the dental industry that have him excited about the future.
Note: Responses were lightly edited for clarity and length.
Question: What are some things that you are excited about when it comes to dentistry right now?
Dr. Sundeep Rawal: I'm really excited about this notion of dental implant therapy and the trajectory that we have with implants changing how we deliver dental care or dental health to the people we serve. There's not been more of a dramatic shift in how we think about tooth replacement in the last 20, 30 years than it is with dental implants, and it's really changing the trajectory of what we're able to offer patients. For a very long time, dentures were as good as it got for a person who has or is losing all their teeth. For a lot of years, the best we could offer to people was a solution that wasn't as good as teeth, but it was the best we could offer.
Today, technology is changing that, especially when it comes to dental implant therapy. We're able to offer solutions to patients that are far superior and give them the ability to have teeth that look like teeth, feel like teeth and actually function like teeth compared to removable dentures in ways that are so close to what it was like to have their natural teeth.
It's exciting because we can do this not just today from the standpoint of the therapy we we offer with dental implants, but also how we deliver that therapy through technological innovation, through the ability to make things easier and take less time and save on effort and make it more affordable because of the areas that we're focused on with innovation around specifically things like implant dentistry. It's never been a better time to impact a person's life through dental care than it is today, especially with what we have with technology and implants.
In the past, there have been quite a few barriers for patients. When we think about implants and we think about the investment that it costs and the convenience and the fear factor and the process itself, there have been some significant barriers why patients feel like these therapies are out of reach and that they are not attainable. Instead, at Aspen Dental, we are so focused on breaking down those barriers, providing patients the ability to get these implant solutions, do it in ways that are simple, reliable, and obviously more accessible so that there's a better and easier ability for the patient to say, 'I want that therapy'. We've really had an unbelievable experience doing that over the last many years, which excites me.