Dental clinics at 'another level'

In the Medical University of South Carolina's new dental clinics building, dentists can make a crown while a patient is sitting in the chair.

There's no longer a need to give a patient a temporary crown and wait nearly a month for a permanent one to be made, said Dr. Wally Renne, a dentist who also teaches dental students.

The dentist designs the crown from an image of the patient's teeth on a computer screen in the examining room. Then, a machine in the room makes the crown in about 18 minutes, Renne said.

So far, dentists have made about 200 of them, Renne said, and only one didn't fit perfectly and needed to be remade, he said.

Jack Sanders, dean of the state's only dental school, said the new $51 million building, which opened late last year, has the latest technology to serve patients, and the space to train more dentists and dental specialists.

The school desperately needed a new building as the Basic Science Building, where it was previously housed, was too small and technologically out of date, he said.

The new building, on Bee Street on the MUSC campus, has 190 dental surgical spaces and clinical space for 11 departments, including general dentistry, pediatric dentistry and oral surgery.

Sanders said there are about 36,000 visits to MUSC's dental clinics each year, and he expects that number to grow with the opening of the new building. Patients who see pre-doctor students or residents pay between one-third to two-thirds of the typical cost of services, he said.

And dental students and professionals now use the most modern equipment to provide those services, he said.

One of the new technologies housed in the building is the cone beam CT scanner, which is used for patients who have tumors, need implants or have experienced many different types of trauma, said Dr. Richard Duncan, a professor in the dental school.

Patients no longer have to lie down and have their bodies moved through a tube. They simply sit in a chair and place their chins in a chin rest. A doctor in an adjoining room can then look at the three-dimensional images of their jaws, teeth and faces on a computer screen.

It's less expensive than a regular CT scan, Duncan said, and uses about one-fifth of the radiation.

Sanders said the clinics also have 200 short movies of dental procedures that patients can watch in the chair prior to a procedure. For instance, he said, a patient about to get a root canal can see on the screen what's involved in that procedure.

And the clinics also are about to launch a system that allows patients to complete their health histories online.

The dental clinics did good work in the old building, Sanders said, "but clearly we're now at another level of patient understanding and service."

Reach Diane Knich at 937-5491 or dknich@postandcourier.com.