Dr. Tony Soileau is about to leave his Lafayette, La., dental office for a meeting of the Academy of Cosmetic Dentistry. This will be his seventh straight weekend on the road, lecturing at mainly smallish dental meetings about the merits and techniques of digital dental imaging.
"I’m tired," he confides.
On the lecture circuit, Dr. Soileau talks to colleagues about what he likes to call "animated verbal skills," what others might describe as "show and tell," with the emphasis on "show."
"We prefer to show patients as opposed to describing everything," says the solo general dentist, who has been in private practice for eight years. "When you first come to see us, for whatever reason, we are going to take digital images of you."
Dr. Soileau and his four staff members have 15 handheld digital cameras to take a series of photographs of every patient’s smile. These digital images are loaded onto the office computer system and manipulated—or "edited," as Dr. Soileau puts it—to show patients how their dentition could be improved with proper treatment.
"We actually let the patient help us edit the smile," he says. "We let them play with the computer—it becomes very interactive."
Dr. Soileau notes that intraoral cameras can be useful tools in treatment planning, but he prefers handheld digitals because they allow him to display "a crystal-clear, full-arch image" on a monitor.
"Instead of talking to a patient about one tooth at a time," he says, "we have the full arch up on the screen full-sized. We may still treat one tooth at a time, but we talk in terms of the whole mouth."
Does this approach encourage patient acceptance of treatment plans?
"Big time," says Dr. Soileau. "It increases the ‘wow’ factor."
The Louisiana dentist showcases his work on the walls of his office. Photographs he’s taken of his many patients’ Hollywood smiles, including some before-and-after shots, fill the rooms and hallways, greeting new patients and no doubt adding to the "wow" factor.
To glimpse some of these photographs, visit Dr. Soileau’s Web site: "www.smilesbysoileau.com".
