Open Dental Forum

I was about to send a treatment plan in the mail and was thinking that it could be confusing to the average patient. So, being a good dentist, I decided to confuse them a little more! Anyone have any ideas on how I can improve the guide?

One thing that I have been doing (and it has been very effective) is color-coding teeth with a green,yellow,orange,red system. It's a lot easier to understand than trying to explain that the tooth has 4mm. subgingival decay and crown lengthening would be needed to even attempt to save this rotten, hopeless tooth (RED!!!). I have done this two ways - one is that I have placed colored dots with a photo/draw program on either a photo of the teeth or a photo of the model, but I am thinking that I could just as easily use a colored pen on top of the tooth numbers.

I really like this dialog... It's really awesome to have the boxes with arrows for tx planning!!!

Not contradicting anything so much as our take on the same subject matter:

1) The stoplight system is perfect to help patients understand treatment needs. Here's how we do it:

Gray: Treatment completed at previous office. No additional treatment necessary at this time
Green: Treatment completed at our office. No additional treatment necessary at this time.

Black: Decay, cracked teeth, etc.
Red: Treatment Planned Stuff

2) The guide at the bottom is contradictory. Red for hopeless teeth, but you have them Tx Planned for crowns. I thought hopeless dictates extraction+implant?
3) It would be useful to have decay indicated in the chart... Decay (black dot), fractured teeth (squiggly line), etc. People really relate to that...

Just a note about the visual impact of the image posted. The fuzzy edges on the tooth roots are gone in version 6.9. Much smoother. We worked hard on that little nitpicky detail.

Alex - good points - thanks!

Rickliftig wrote:Alex - good points - thanks!

Thanks Rick! How did you get the dialog box in there anyway? Powerpoint? It's not really in the chart at this time, right?

I think I used Word 2007 to put it togther. The call outs, arrows and text boxes are in the program.

How cool would it be to be able to put these kind of callouts in OD???