My name is TC Patel.
I'm a general dentist here at the Colchester Referral Specialist Centre.
I've been here 17 years, so my specialist interests are dental implants and full mouth rehabs.
And where cases in particular when somebody loses a tooth, we always give a patient four choices.
The first choice is that you've got a gap there.
You can either have something done about it or leave it as it is.
We offer them a partial denture, something you take in and out, a fixed option like bridge work, and the most ideal option is an implant where we are not touching teeth on either side and we place something in within the bone that gives the patient a tooth that feels like their own.
They look after, they clean after it as it is.
The assessment is made by using CT scans on about the bone.
So we know exactly where we're going to place.
And in the last few years digital dentistry has come along.
So now work is done with our digital full upflow where we can show our patient on computers, on scans, what we're going to do, how we prepare them for surgery.
And now we're going to restore them at the end with the crown made digitally.
So within the practise here, we've got our cone CT scanner, which tells us about the volumes of bone that you require for dental implants once the surgery is done.
It also shows us a lot about the anatomy of the area, the danger areas, what to avoid and whatnot, what to avoid.
And then when implants are done, we've got digital scanners here.
We use those scanners to then plan the treatment and plan the crown work that's got to go on to the patient.
So when CT scans are done or when digital impressions are taken, we always show the patient, we turn the cameras and the screens around to them.
They can walk to the screen to the monitors so we can go through the whole thing.
So it's an informed decision.
They know exactly what they're going to have and the consent process is accordingly carried out so they're fully aware of the treatment they're going to have.
So one of the biggest thing a patient comes in with, and most patients have this is wear wear of teeth where they've worn their teeth down from grinding, clenching.
A lot of people in stress days don't sleep well at night.
They grind their teeth and they reduce them to fraction of the size that were originally there.
So part of the treatment here will be the restore that height back to them.
Most people live with that sort of thing.
Other ones will then come along and say to the mighty that become sensitive, can you do something about them.
So that's quite a major part of the practise.
The other part of the practise that we do, particularly in my surgical field, is restoring very heavily broken down teeth.
There are always limitations on how far you can restore a tooth, but mainly if the tooth is restorable, we'll find ways of doing it.
They may have to go through other disciplines within dentists to save the tooth just says like endodontics or even gum specialists have to be involved.
But within the centre here they can see all those specialists and at the end it always ends up with me because I sent them there and they come back to me for the rest of the work.
But when a patient comes in for a consultation, we use a lot of photography.
We take photos of their teeth before we started and at the end how they're finished.
It's always a shock for a patient when they see what they came in with and how they're left smile on their face.
The look on their face is what interests me the most.
I want to see happy patient living in practise.