*This course review is NOT sponsored*
If you follow @ImplantNinja on Instagram, then you’ve probably heard of their new initiative to help dental students and new graduates learn basic bread and butter dentistry skills. Implant Ninja collaborated with a couple of other dentists to create a variety of online courses to watch and learn from. Recently, they released a free course to dental students and new graduates called “The Art of Shucking Teeth”. Here is my review.
The course layout starts out with a very basic review of instruments and techniques to use when doing simple extractions. While this initial info was more review than revolutionary, it was a great reminder of proper techniques and instruments to look for when extracting teeth. If you’re already pretty confident with the basics, you can probably skip the first part of the course.
Where the course really shines (in my opinion) is the tips for surgical extractions. In this section of the course, Dr. Joshua Heyrend gives you detailed explanations and tips for sectioning teeth and even for creating flaps when surgical extraction is required. The most useful part for me was when he sectioned a tooth and removed that section, he showed it against another tooth to emphasize where the cuts were made and even measured it with a probe to show approximately how far down the sections were made. All of these demonstrations were done on a typodont, but I particularly enjoyed watching the following clinical video where showed how he puts the concepts to use on a real live patient.
Another bonus addition is the section about handling post-op complications such dry socket, a sinus exposure, or prolonged post-op bleeding. Learning more about what to do in these cases is important to making sure you can properly treat your patient and make sure that they receive the best care.
Overall, this course is a valuable tool for any dental student or newer dentist to review concepts for effectively extracting teeth. While extractions can sometimes be a bit intimidating (especially if the tooth requires a surgical extraction) this guide presents the information in a very simple way which makes you confident in your technique when the time comes to use it.
If you’re interested, you can sign up at https://toothninjas.teachable.com .
General Dentist. Author at The Tooth Bank and create content for our social media with a focus on providing information for new dentists..
