Spending less time at the dentist office? What an ingenious idea!
 MARISA BIRNBAUM works in her MobileTek Labs van outside the Riverdale Cosmetic Dentist on Henry Hudson Parkway. The roving lab drastically cuts the amount of time it takes to perform a tooth restoration. Photo by Claudio Papapietro |
Anyone who has needed a tooth restoration knows what a long and arduous process it can be. In most cases, patients are required to see their dentist multiple times over the span of a couple of weeks and many are forced to wear a temporary during this waiting period.
Two Riverdale natives are working to change all that.
David and Marisa Birnbaum are the co-founders of MobileTek Labs, a super-equipped van that carts the equipment needed to make onsite tooth restorations - in an hour.
The brother-sister team, both graduates of Bronx High School of Science, work directly with dentists practicing in Riverdale and Westchester.
Since starting the business in October, the pair has already gathered more than a dozen dentists for their program and they believe that this roster will expand significantly as word continues to spread.
"I actually got my inspiration for this after my own trip to the dentist," David Birnbaum explained. "I just could not believe people were still waiting up to two weeks for crowns, veneers and other tooth restorations, so I thought, why not make things more accessible by physically bringing the lab to the dentist."
On the day of an appointment, the Birnbaums drive the van right to the door of the dentist's office. They receive the patient's tooth impression from the dentist, bring it back to the van and begin the process using a two-piece machine known as CEREC 3. First, the damaged tooth is scanned using an infrared camera and the 3-D image is displayed on a computer screen. Using the computer's software, the tooth is redesigned and scaled onscreen to fit the appropriate space in the patient's mouth.
Once the digital reconstruction is complete, the image is sent to the second part of the machine, which uses a high-speed diamond bur and disk to carve the restored tooth out of a solid block of ceramic material. The lab has dozens of different ceramic blocks to match the varying colors of patients' teeth. The finished restoration fits perfectly on to the original impression and is then brought back to the dentist, who uses a special adhesive to re-attach it to the damaged tooth.
In total, the whole process takes around two hours.
"For me, the best thing about this is knowing that we are helping the patient by speeding the whole procedure up and making them feel better about the way their smile looks," says Ms. Birnbaum. "We recently ran into one of our first patients, who was so appreciative and excited about the way everything turned out. It was a really cool feeling to see first-hand the positive impact of our service."
Considering that there are only three of these mobile dental labs in the entire country, it is easy to understand why Mr. Birnbaum takes a lot of pride in the fact that he and his sister are one of the originators of this innovative idea. In order to start the business, the pair also had to travel to Denver, Colo., where they completed 220 clinical hours of CEREC 3-D instruction and received official certification from the Rocky Mountain CEREC Academy.
"Obviously neither of us has a background in dentistry so taking this intensive training program in August was really important," Mr. Birnbaum explained. "Not only did we learn how to use the equipment but we also learned about the teeth themselves, which has made it a lot easier when designing the restorations."s
This digital 3-D imaging software used in the MobileTek lab has been perfected for nearly five years, which brings up the question of why most dentists do not have this technology installed in their own offices. First, the price tag for the CEREC 3 machine alone can be upwards of $100,000 to purchase and that does not include other supplies. More importantly, an individual dentist with this equipment would then have to either hire and train new staff members to perform the restorations, or do the work themselves, which would drastically limit the number of patients they could see each day.
"I am incredibly excited about working with MobileTek Labs, and so far my patients have been very receptive to the option of onevisit restorations," said Dr. Dov Kahane, who has an office in the Whitehall Building at 3333 Henry Hudson Parkway. "This service is beneficial to everyone involved, it helps me and my patients get the highest quality tooth restoration in the shortest amount of time.
The Birnbaums say they are eventually hoping to work with every dentist in the local area and have already looked into starting a second van. "That is the ultimate goal," said Ms. Birnbaum, "to make this treatment available to as many patients as possible."
For a list of participating dentists and additional information about the business, go to www.mobileteklabs. com or call 888-342-0539.
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This is part of the January 3, 2008 online edition of The Riverdale Press.
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