The Importance of Dental Labs

by Oral Health

Dental Labs
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According to our survey respondents, most dentists are still using external dental labs and have no immediate plans of adding an in-house lab to their practice. This is to be expected as starting up and running a dental lab requires high costs and a lot of work. Essentially, it is committing to running another entire business. However, we also found that quality is immensely important for dentists when it comes to lab use, and having an in-house lab is a terrific way to ensure the quality of the work. An in-house lab allows dentists to have more input and control over treatment and design. Technicians also have direct access to patients rather than just receiving the impressions and paperwork from the dentist. Another benefit is shorter treatment time. Most dentists use a lab within 25km of their office to ensure a quick delivery; imagine how much quicker things could be done internally? Perhaps in the future we will see more dentists going in the direction of in-house labs, but only time will tell.

As seen in the print issue of Oral Health March 2023

*In October and November 2022 Bramm Research, a third-party independent research house, con-ducted an online survey of active, practicing non-hospital affiliated dentists and dental specialists on behalf of Oral Health. Survey invitations went out to a contact list of approximately 9,000 readers and there were 251 completions, for a response rate of 2.8. With a total sample of 251, the margin of error is plus or minus 6.0 percentage points at the 95 percent confidence level. If, for example, 50% of the sample indicated that agreed with a statement, then we can be reasonably sure (19 times out of 20) of an accuracy within +/- 6.0%. This means that a total census would reveal an answer of not less than 44.0% and not more than 56.0%.

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