hey it's dr amanda with street smile solutions street smile solutions.com and i've been kind
of delicately dancing about this topic for about a year now giving you guys some hints and tip tricks
and tips about how to use other scanners with invisalign and this is a bit of a hot button topic
because whenever i post something about this or share something about this i'm invisalign comes
down on me from the powers that be and can be very unpleasant and they always ask me to take
it down they tell me it's not true but here's the thing it is true because i keep verifying it with
doctors who are regularly using it and until today people i have so many doctors asking me for how to
do this and i was i'm just always hesitant that if i give away my secrets that they're going to
find that loophole and they're going to close it down so please don't get mad at me if it gets
closed down because they are telling you through their tms that they're very likely going to
close it down they're saying this is a temporary loophole workaround to help doctors get back into
the group because of covet that is what they're saying and they're not publishing anything there's
nothing out there but yet all y'all are asking so let's take you back on a little history lesson
invisalign started in 1997 in 2001 they started letting general dennis use it um inter-oral
scanners became a lot more prevalent there's lots of different oral scanners yes the itero is a
great scanner it's a nice scanner it's a bulky scanner it's an expensive scanner and it has
monthly fees and it's not always the best thing if you're doing a lot of crown bridge restorative
implants it's not always the first scanner that a lot of general dentists would want to have
so general dentists are often or even pediatric dentists caught in the middle because they're like
well it's not really my first choice in expanders expanders in scanners it's more expensive and by
the way if you want to learn more about this in my book which you can find at amazon if you
want to know how to get my book you can go to my website straightsmilesolutions.com and there's a
tab for that and it's a great book and it has a whole section on picking a scanner but anyways
i mean we go over a lot of this but the main thing is is that you got to find the right scanner for
you right and sometimes the right scanner isn't the itero i mean it's not the perfect scanner
right not for everybody it's not that portable blah blah blah so anyways at the moment q1
2021 you are able to use other scanners they say you can't when you go to their website they say
you can't but you can there's some work around so there's three different ways that i've heard
doctors are doing this and i'm gonna go over what i think is the best way and then the other ways so
um again don't get mad at me invisalign don't come down on me because i'm just telling you the truth
of what many many doctors are telling me so if you don't know about this loophole which i know you do
personally i think you should just let it go let the doctors use what they're going to use you know
maybe you charge an additional fee for the right i mean it's kind of like okay for example i'm gonna
give you an analogy if i go to a fancy restaurant right they want me to buy their expensive wine
but somewhat some restaurants will let me bring in a bottle and they'll charge me a quarter fee
why not so i call bs because when i initially met with the exact team at invisalign two years ago i
brought this up and that time they blocked it you couldn't use any other scanner and i said i call
bs on this i know people who've tried some and it works out just so don't tell me that only the
iteral can scan for invisalign because we can it's a different workflow and i realize it's not as
seamless but some doctors aren't in a position to buy another scanner and you are prohibiting them
from doing invisalign they're going and they're using other aligner companies because you're not
letting them to do it but if they had a choice they use invisalign right so it's kind of dumb
i realize they make more profit off selling an itero than they do doing a few cases but why would
doctors want to invest in your eye tarot if they haven't tried a few cases to see if they like it
you know what i mean so let the doctors have this workaround let the doctors maybe try out a few
with their initial scanner or you know it's not as seamless you know so eventually if they're doing
a lot of volume they're going to want to buy your eye tarot anyways because it's way easier to use
and there's a lot of other benefits and if you don't know about those benefits you should read
in my book about it and you guys i try to be switzerland with this i like i like invisalign
i like hytero i also like other aligner companies i also like other scanners so they all work let's
just all get along anyways okay now i'm going to go over the three workflows and please miss
lane do not come down on me with this because i'm just telling you the truth i'm telling you what
tms are telling doctors what doctors are telling me and it's not just one doctor it's many doctors
and the workflow might be slightly different in your country this is the workflow in the us so if
you are in canada or many other countries actually they're totally fine with using other scanners
only in the us and a few other countries i can't there were three countries like the us china and
something else where they blocked the direct use of other scanners because of a lawsuit okay
so let's talk about the workflows the one i recommend is the stl digital workflow so you're
gonna go ahead and scan your patient on whatever you have your three shape or whatever you're going
to export the stl you know just like you would it's really easy with clear correct you just
upload the stl right or if you're using globally upload the stl there's no place to upload the stl
that's not part of their i don't know why it isn't but they could easily add that to their clin check
but so basically your two options with the clint check at least in the u.s are either
they're going to pair it automatically with your itero and you're going to select the name or
you're going to say i'm doing pvs impressions so go ahead and select pvs impressions okay
go ahead and submit it it's going to say status waiting for records then what you're going to do
is you're going to email their records department which i may not get this right it's either records
aligntech.com or records align technology.com or records invisalign.com you might have to ask your
tm or give them a call but there is a records email that they do give out and you're gonna
attach the stls in that email okay they're pretty big files so you might have to zip
them or whatever you need to do and then of course you're going to put the patient's name
and number to me it doesn't seem to have a compliant seems like you should really
be doing it through the portal but whatever um and that's that they'll just they'll once they
elect the uh records department gets that they'll pair it and they'll go ahead and do the setup
plenty doctors tell me this works just fine they do it all the time can't promise it's gonna last
forever though so enjoy it while you can do as many cases as you can right now okay there
were two other workflows that people were doing before this workflow that some people are still
doing so i'm going to go ahead and tell you those workflows those involve if you have a 3d printer
or you can export your stl to any local lab that has a 3d printer they pretty much all do
they print out the little horseshoes for you and you throw the horseshoes in the box
that works too some people you know tell me that they take impressions of the horseshoes
that's the third workflow you have to use some type of separating medium because otherwise
depending on what type of resin you use sometimes the pvs in the invisalign trays will stick to the
resin so that doesn't work super well but that would be the third workflow there's no
way invisalign knows at all if you're taking an impression of a horseshoe or if you're taking
that you already printed out that you you know that way the patient thinks that you're doing
intraoral scanning right they don't know because you are doing it to oral scanning you're getting
all the detail but then you're taking impression of that printed model bingo that's the third way
that will always work it's always has worked i just it depends on you're gonna have to you
know try some a b testing to see what works so that one's a little bit goopy you're still it
it decreases the whole point of the whole thing because you're going to lose some accuracy the
patient's not going to know but you know you're going to lose accuracy it's extra work for you
you're going to have to print out the models then you're going to have to waste trays and
impression material to do that so it wouldn't be my preference plus the whole point of the
reason why i like besides all the accuracy and the workflow and everything but it's sustainable using
integral scanner decreases tons of plastic waste into the environment you know carbon footprint all
that so i really hope that invisalign becomes more sustainable i realize that they do have like um
a bear debater testing an invisalign a liner recycling program they haven't really rolled
it out but i've heard about it but it would be really great if they got more flexible
and personally i think they should actually stop taking impressions i think that would be a huge
deal as of december you know 2021 we no longer accept impressions we're only pure digital we're
going to charge an additional fee if you're not using itero blah blah blah that's what i would do
if i were joe hogan because it's the right thing to do you can get a very affordable
scanner at the moment and it's unless they take that step or unless they charge extra you know for
impressions nobody's gonna a lot of people don't take that move you know to get that scanner so
i hope that they do do that because it's the right thing to do and i think we'd all
have a lot more respect for invisalign if they did that but then they got to give you
an opportunity to use different scanners right so they got to give doctors you know
six months 12 months notice um but anyways that's my workarounds hopefully that was helpful
please don't get mad at me invisalign because ultimately like i said i do like your product
my ultimate goal is actually to have doctors have better outcomes and to make things easier and to
be better for the environment so that's why i'm posting this video it does work all right thanks