Bite magazine’s October 2014 is a celebration of the top innovators of the Australian dental industry. It should probably come as no surprise that cosmetic dentists had more than their fair share of inclusion in this group. There is something impressively unique about the combination of artistry and science in this dentistry niche that lends itself to creating something new and fabulous. And Dr. Sigal Jacobson, the inventor of Uveneer™, is included in this esteemed group of talented professionals.
She was interviewed by the magazine, and she talked about how frustrating it was for her as a cosmetic dentist to be unable to create the perfect direct veneer in a reasonable amount of time. It was this frustration, along with a healthy dose of persistence, to develop and perfect a new composite application method. In the interview, she said:
“My passion has always been cosmetic dentistry, and I believe in saving the tooth structure. I also love to work with the new generation composites. I think they’re great. They have better physical properties with a lot of shades and nice effects. Although I am a good cosmetic dentist and I do have the artistic ability, I find it always very challenging to get a perfect result with my composite veneers within a reasonable surgery time.
“The reason is that it takes time to create a perfect composite veneer. It takes about one to one-and-a-half hours to do a perfect one and as a dentist, I’m not getting paid enough to spend so much time with a patient. As a dentist, we are restricted by how much patients can pay. For composite veneers patients pay from $250 to $400. Composite veneers fit in with the minimally ‘invasive approach’ and are affordable for patients. So I had to find a solution.”
With the help of engineers. Dr. Jacobson was able to develop a tool that gives dentists a fast and predictable way to create direct composite veneers that are perfect for the patient.
“I thought this will take about a month,” Dr. Jacobson says in the article. “It took two years. We had a lot of obstacles along the way.”
Those obstacles included finding a way to indicate positioning, making it from a material that would not attach to the composite, adding glass particles to the plastic to make it autoclaveable and unbreakable. Be she persevered, never giving up on her dream. And in February 2014, Uveneer was officially launched at the Midwinter Meeting of the Chicago Dental Society.
Although she was nervous about the reception her “baby” would receive, feedback was overwhelmingly positive from both dentists and distributors. In fact, “they loved it.
Still well under a year after its launch, Uveneer is now represented in 12 countries and on three continents. This rapid growth suggests that Dr. Jacobson was not the only artistic cosmetic dentist looking for a better solution!