Once again this week, a member of the CDOCS faculty is back to provide you with a clinical tip that can help your dental patients and practice.
In the latest clinical tip, courtesy of CDOCS, Dr. Diwakar Kinra is back, this time with a focus on the endodontics portion of your practice and how to determine thermal sensitivity through a full coverage crown or even a calcified tooth.
Here's what Dr. Kinra has to say in the video, which you can watch by clicking the Play button above.
"Many of you know that Endo Ice is a really good way to determine thermal sensitivity when doing endodontic diagnosis. But I get asked lots of times, 'Can you determine thermal sensitivity through a full coverage crown or even a calcified tooth?' And you absolutely can. And when I do a lot of education around the country, I noticed that there's a couple of different ways to test for cold. Well, you can either test for cold by delivering Endo Ice or the refrigerant onto a cotton tip applicator or a No. 2 cotton pellet.
"Now, if you take a look at the research, the research will show that there's actually a big difference in the amount of temperature difference that you'll see when delivering the refrigerant in either of these two manners. When you take a look at a cotton pellet, the No. 2 cotton pellet changes the temperature about 47° C. That's how much it lowers the temperature by compared to a cotton tip applicator, which research shows can only change the temperature about 0.5° C. So as you can see here, there's a clear winner when it comes to delivering refrigerant to a tooth. I always put it on the cervical edge and I get a really good response with a No. 2 cotton pellet."
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