My Dentistry Today Magazine Feature: The Technology of Belief

A few years ago, I had a conversation with Dentistry Today’s team about having me write a Dentistry Today magazine feature. Little did I know, it would end up on the cover of the April 2023 edition! To this day, I’m still honored that I was given the chance to write the article, because it has allowed me to talk about the most important part of endodontics: believing in its power to save teeth.

Here’s the idea behind the article: You can have access to all the fancy endodontic technology in the world, but if you don’t believe that most teeth can be saved, then those teeth will get extracted.

At the end of the day, it’s about your headspace as a healer and provider. If you don’t believe you can save a tooth, then you might not even give it a shot. My article in Dentistry Today is all about inspiring you to rise above that assumption and #GiveTeethAChance!

In the words of Ralph Waldo Emerson, “We acquire the strength we have overcome.” In my experience, this is SO TRUE. When you’re able to overcome a challenge, the power, fear, and uncertainty it once had over you is defeated. Saving an “unsaveable” tooth changes who you are as a dentist. Suddenly you believe in the impossible. And I want us all to believe!

You can read the entirety of the Dentistry Today magazine feature by clicking the image below. Or, read on to get the main takeaways from the article, as well as learn more about what it was like for me to write such a career-defining piece.

Read the entire article

The Process of Writing My Dentistry Today Magazine Feature

When it came to writing the article, I had so many ideas. It was hard to narrow them down into the topics I wanted to focus on. 

But then it came to me… mythbusting! There are a lot of beliefs that are handed to us in dental school that we either don’t have the time to explore with more nuance, or where the science has actually changed. Endodontics continues to become more sophisticated, and that requires more time than most dental school curriculums can give the subject. So, that leads to a number of outdated beliefs or myths that are very common among dentists. I wanted to provide alternatives to those beliefs.

So, feeling inspired, I began writing the article. I had fun picking out tooth stories to go with each commonly held belief, and I got fired up! And then, I took a step back and thought about the tone I wanted the article to have. 

I’ve gone through a huge personal shift in the last few years when it comes to thinking about the energy I put out in the world. Each of us is capable of both masculine and feminine energy. As I’ve written before, this has nothing to do with whether you’re a man or a woman. It’s all about the type of energy you bring to a situation, as both help us succeed in different ways. Whereas masculine energy is more forceful and about pushing forward, feminine energy is more gentle and about being in flow.

As I was writing my Dentistry Today magazine feature, I felt myself resisting the urge to tell my audience what they “should” or “shouldn’t” do as providers. After all, I was sharing wisdom from many years of experience as an endodontist. But invoking shame or blame or taking a superior stance doesn’t actually help anyone grow. We’re all in this together, and I always want to ensure I’m coming from a supportive place when talking to other dentists—whether in a magazine feature or right here on this blog!

So I did a few editing passes on the article to make sure I used inclusive “we” language as much as possible, and that I made suggestions rather than directives. My audience would be made up of people who are just as much dental professionals as me, and so I wanted to talk to them as the intelligent equals that they are.

The Main Takeaway: Tackling Common-Held Beliefs

There are four commonly-held beliefs that I tackle in the article. By using tooth stories as evidence, I suggest that we can rewrite these beliefs.

The biggest one that I address is the idea that big lesions just don’t heal. So often, when there’s a big lesion, many dentists want to extract the tooth. However, we can often perform a root canal instead to promote healing!

For example, here’s a patient who had a significant amount of circumferential bone loss around tooth #31, where her dentist found a periapical radiolucency. I diagnosed the tooth as Necrotic Pulp and Chronic Apical Abscess #31. 

Here’s the preoperative radiograph:

And the two-year follow-up:

The only treatment she received to achieve this result was a root canal. Endodontics truly is incredible! If you want the full story about how this impressive recovery happened, check out the full article.

I invite you to rewrite your beliefs. Let’s turn “Big lesions don’t heal,” into “Lesion size is not a determinant of healing ability.”

And while we’re at it, let’s reconsider some of the other commonly-held beliefs that I discuss in my Dentistry Today magazine feature:

What Can You Do to Reexamine Your Beliefs?

Over the years, I’ve learned and relearned a lot about dentistry and endodontics. It’s one thing to be taught something during class, but it’s another to live it with patients. 

In my 15+ years as an endodontist, I’ve pretty much seen it all. After all, it’s the tricky cases that end up in my office! I’ve successfully treated, saved, and healed countless teeth that other dentists would condemn to extraction. 

I know you don’t have the luxury of doing root canals all day every day to see their efficacy over the long-term. That’s why I’ve created E-School, an endodontic CE course, to teach you all the tips and tricks I’ve learned over the years to make your root canals more successful.

By working together to build new and powerful beliefs about endodontics, we can save more teeth than ever before!

– Sonia