Episode 790: How a 31-Year-Old Dentist Built Trust, Case Acceptance, and a Fee-for-Service Cosmetic Practice

And I'm thinking, am I really going to have enough space here for an op-rep case?
So what I do in this type of case is I take all my photographs, which include a portrait, retracted
smile, left, right, occlusal, occlusal maxillary, occlusal of the mandibular. I take a digital scan
with a bite I sent to my lab technician, a ceramist, and he sends me back an STL file.
that I can print those at my office and I make a matrix. It takes up one day, and one day I can do
that. And I can bring the patient back the next day and do a markup over the teeth.
Welcome to Austin, Texas, and welcome to the Phil Kline Dental Podcast. Today's episode is one I
think you're really going to enjoy, especially if you're a young dentist, an aspiring practice
owner, or anyone interested in building a high-end cosmetic practice the right way.
I'm joined by Dr. Luis Abrahante, a 31-year-old dentist who's been in private practice for just
over three years near Birmingham, Alabama, and he's already built a thriving fee-for-service
practice focused on comprehensive high-end cosmetic dentistry. We'll talk about why he made the
decision early on to pursue cosmetic dentistry and how he overcame one of the biggest challenges
young dentists face. getting patients to say yes to comprehensive treatment plans when you don't
have decades of experience behind your name. A big part of his success has come from his use of
photography, not just before and after images, but interim photos that document every step of his
cases. Those photos have helped build trust, strengthen the dentist-patient relationship,
and dramatically improve case acceptance. Photography has also become a powerful teaching and self
-evaluation tool for him. By reviewing his own images, Dr. Abrahante is constantly refining his
techniques and finding more efficient ways to deliver better results. We also dive into no prep
veneers, why proper case selection, treatment planning, and a strong understanding of occlusion and
tooth alignment are absolutely critical for those procedures. You'll hear how he markets his
practice, although he does not participate in any third-party dental insurance, and why he prefers
indirect restorations over direct, his favorite materials, and why, despite having a chair-side
milling set up, he often chooses to send his digital impressions to the lab. And behind it all is
an incredible personal story. Dr. Abrahante came to the United States from Cuba at 18 years old,
not knowing a word of English. Today, at just 31, He's built a successful,
fulfilling career, and he's already planning his next phase, expanding from four operatories to six
and bringing on an associate. This is an inspiring conversation about vision,
discipline, and doing dentistry at a very high level. Before we bring in our guest,
I do want to say that if you're enjoying these episodes and want to support the show, please follow
us on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. You'll be the first to know about our new releases and our entire
production team will really appreciate it. Dr. Abrahante, welcome to the show. Hey, thank you for
having me again. Yeah, we're very happy to have you back. And we had a really good engagement on
your last podcast episode. And because it was so good, we wanted to have you back and continue the
conversation. So you've made a deliberate choice to focus your practice on high-end cosmetic
dentistry early in your career. You're a young guy. What drew you to that path? And what did you do
differently from day one to make it viable? Definitely failed. Well, ever since I was in dental
school, I always wanted to have an aesthetic practice. Aesthetics is something that I've been
thinking of, I think, even before I started dental school. And the minute I graduated,
I started putting all the efforts and all my thoughts into how can I...
Being this path, how can I go into a practice where I can do what I like? I mean,
I like doing other stuff as well, like doing root canals, implants. In fact, I do many of those.
But the focus of my practice is mainly aesthetic work, veneers, smile designs,
and full mouth reconstructions. And as soon as I graduated,
I looked for a really good mentor that helped me during my first two years right after graduation.
And I think that was one of the things that helped me out the most as soon as I graduated.
And I just, I didn't want to be, I guess, the Instagram doctor. I know in Instagram, everything
looks really good and all that. And my goal was to actually do this transformation for people and
actually change people's lives. And because there's nothing like you get a,
you get. mouthful of old restorations and all of a sudden you put veneers and it's incredible the
change you can, the impact you can have in people's lives. Oh yeah, for sure, for sure. Their
confidence level, the way they interact with other people, their self-esteem. Yeah, it all is
affected by your smile. So you're a pretty young guy, as I mentioned. So as a younger dentist,
how do you establish credibility and authority with patients seeking premium cosmetic work,
especially when competing with more established clinicians in your area? Definitely. It is still a
challenge. I'm not going to lie. I'm working on that every single day because it's only been about
three years and change since I graduated. I graduated in 2022. And at least once or twice a week,
we get a case of a smile design. And when you talk about that in Birmingham, Alabama, where I am
located, it is hard. And I think a lot of that had to do with me taking a lot of photographs.
Not only of the before and after. Before and after looks great. But if you show people the steps
and you show how much of the tooth you need to prepare, especially those no prep veneers.
I've done many of those no prep veneers. And if you show people the steps and actually tell them,
hey, we're not going to have to do this. very aggressive crown and reduce the entire tooth and
leave you all the way down into very skinny knob on the tooth. But these are actually the steps
that we do to get you from point A to point B. I think that has been my biggest selling factor,
I guess, for lack of a better word here. That has been the biggest selling factor there,
showing people the steps, not only the before and after. Photography has been... Incredible.
It is incredible how much photography has helped me. You know, I've talked to a lot of dentists on
this show and my colleagues, and they agree that photography is really invaluable to their
practice. Some of these offices have photography rooms where they just bring the patient in there
and they take pictures. What kind of equipment, what kind of a camera and auxiliary equipment are
you currently using in your operatory? I don't have very, very, very fancy equipment, but I do have
a nice one. I have a Canon. T8i is one, I guess, medium range type of camera.
And I have a 100 millimeter lens that I use pretty much for everything on this.
If I take a portrait, I may change the lens. But my workhorse is a 100 millimeter lens with an
aperture of the 2.8. And flash, I have the flashes, the Godox flashes,
the M12 flashes. I like the twin flashes with the soft boxes, the fixed light soft boxes.
And I can do everything with that. So now do you take these photos yourself or does your staff take
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.com. I take most of the photos I take myself. I would say 90% of them I take myself.
I do have another small camera that my assistant uses every now and then for like shape match,
like a quick shape match picture and I'm working with a patient. She has a camera that is preset
and all that. But I think it will be very hard to train an assistant in all the little details of
how I want the picture. So when you're doing a case, Isn't it kind of disruptive to workflow to
reach for a camera? You've got your gloves on, your gloves are, you know, have been in the
patient's mouth. You want to maintain infection control and now you reach for a camera. How do you
manage that? It definitely, it's always, it's a question that always comes in conversations.
I do two things. One of them is sometimes I double glove. If I'm going to use the camera real
quick, I put another glove to just take the picture. Another thing that I do very often is I cover
my entire camera in the blue paper and we cover all the things that you touch and all that.
But my assistant, when I'm working in those particular cases where I'm very busy, my assistant does
take some pictures there. The pictures that I'm talking about more mainly are the before and afters
and when the patient just comes for a follow-up. Pictures that are in the middle of procedures, If
I want to take it myself, I would do that. But most of the times, those pictures are definitely
taken by my assistant. Are those photos used, like you mentioned, to help with case acceptance?
I'm talking about the ones, the interim photos, not the before and afters, but the ones that you're
taking during the procedure. Is that primarily to show the steps to the patient?
Show the steps. And you're telling me that those interim photos, the patients actually want to see
the details of... Definitely. I would never think they wanted to see the details, but they
actually... to see the details. If you show them, it's incredible how engaged they get in the
conversations. And then they start asking details about, but are you going to drill in between my
teeth? Are you going to drill on the back of my tooth? Are you going to cut the length of my tooth?
And they start asking questions that you maybe never thought they were going to ask. And once you
start showing the steps, it's incredible how much that engages in the conversation and how much
that engages the patients into the treatment. So you think the additional engagement and actually
showing them what you're doing builds trust. It definitely builds trust, especially for somebody
like myself. I'm very young here. If you go to somebody who's been doing this for 40 years,
the name itself may sell the case. In my case, I have to show you. I have to tell you here.
This is what I have done. These are the last 20 cases we've done. And these are the last 40 cases.
Or do you want to see a diastema closure? This is what we do. And I have enough cases now that I
pretty much have a case for. for everything i guess or at least for the majority of the things that
we do and documenting all those cases is it has been a tremendous help it's interesting to me
because you know typically you would think the patient doesn't want to know the details at that
level maybe maybe it's the fact that you're looking at the patient as someone who is capable of
understanding all of this and and in that way you're building a relationship with that patient
where the where the patient's thinking you know this doctor really appreciates my intelligence you
know he understands that I want to know what's going on with my own teeth I just don't want to open
my mouth and hope for the best I think it's a great approach now you also teach so these
photographs are good for educational purposes right to teach your your colleagues yes sir there's
definitely some of some of those photographs that I take I use on the for my lectures and it helps
it helps with everything it even helps me correcting my own mistakes Because you do something and
then the patient leaves, you don't see that anymore. And then you don't have a chance to go back
and look at that picture, enlarge the picture and say, hmm, maybe if I had rounded this corner of
the margin a little bit better, maybe if I had done so and so better. It's incredible how much I
have learned from my own pictures. So when you can, Dr. Abrante, you've talked about how you
perform no prep veneers. Obviously, this is a conservative approach,
which is great. The argument is that if you don't prep the tooth to some extent, you're going to
have over contouring once you put the restoration on. So with that in mind, how do you approach no
prep veneers? The no prep veneers, it is a tricky concept because some people,
when the patients hear no prep and they think everything will be no prep.
And for some reason, patients associate no prep with a reversible procedure.
They hear no prep and say, okay, so whenever I don't like it, I'll take it out and that's it. So it
is a tricky concept to explain to the patients for sure. And one of the first things that I say is
none of these procedures are reversible. But most of the patients that come to me, they already
made up their mind that they want to do something about their smile. So I really don't have to deal
too much with explaining about the reversibility of the procedures. But the no prep concept,
it is true. If you don't have the right case, I think the no prep is about the right case. You need
to understand where that veneer will be. You have to understand occlusion. You have to understand
alignment of the teeth. And when we say no prep, sometimes you do have to maybe around the corner
of one incisal edge or around the distal angle of a tooth. But no prep is,
I would say, maybe 10% of cases. Not every case would be a complete, complete no prep.
But I understand the concept that everyone argues is two bodies cannot occupy the same space.
And I understand that. If you do a very skinny feldspathic veneer, 0.2 microns.
We're talking about microns. I'm talking about 0.2 millimeters, something very, very, very, very
skinny. And when you polish that margin very well at the gingival margin.
those margins become undetectable to the explorer if you do it right those margins will become
undetectable and i have had great success there no staining no problems with those and i've been
doing those for about maybe my first case was about three years ago and i've been able to follow up
with that case and i haven't had i haven't seen of any problems with the no prep veneers now the
problem with the no prep veneers is you need to know how to treatment plan the case.
You need to take the right course or have the right mentor to teach you about the not prep veneers
because it's not only about dentistry. It involves ortho. It involves period. You need to have a
good team around you that you can have the right foundation for the not prep. Now,
does ortho hurt the case acceptance when you start talking to the patient about straightening their
teeth? I guess you're talking about using... aligners, possibly. Clear aligners. Yeah. And what's
the typical period of time they have to be in clear aligners before you get to the veneers? It
really varies. I do clear aligners myself. I'm an Invisalign certified as well. And many of these
cases I do myself. And maybe I would say six months, four to six months is the minimum.
And the maximum could be one, two years, right? But one, two years is mainly,
sometimes it's not the typical no prep.
28 30 year old female that comes into their practice almost perfectly aligned teeth but she doesn't
like the the the shade of her teeth she just wants to have wider teeth and gets a better smile and
we just have we just enlarge maybe the vocal corridor to to to help with the um the negative spaces
and the gap around the the smile and that's the typical no prep veneer we don't typically see a 60
year old female or male requesting no prep veneers those are mainly we'll prep on those and what's
the workflow typically for a veneer where the teeth are in position they're ready to be worked on
to get these veneers, what's your digital workflow look like? We'll be right back with our guest,
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Grandioso for you today at voco.dental. A lot of times I will request a wax up if I'm second
guessing, if I'm looking at the teeth and I'm thinking, am I really going to have enough? space
here for an op-rep case. So what I do in this type of case is I take all my photographs,
which include a portrait, retracted smile, left, right, occlusal, occlusal maxillary,
occlusal of the mandibular. I take a digital scan with a bite I sent to my lab technician,
a ceramist, and he sends me back an STL file. that I can print to my office.
I have the spring rates that I can, I print those at my office and I make a matrix.
It takes one day and one day I can do that. And I can bring the patient back the next day and do a
mock-up over the teeth. It gives me a template. And it also gives me a chance to show the patient,
here's how your teeth are going to look like. What's the mock-up? What do you use for the mock-up
material? I use DMG, the Luxaflow. Okay, so use Luxaflow. Luxaflow,
yeah. Temporary material. It's very popular, I guess. Most of the people doing aesthetic work have
used at least Luxaflow at some point. So, Dr. Abrahante, when we talk about smile design,
that can mean different things to different clinicians. Walk us through how you collaborate with
patients during the smile design process to align their vision of what they expect their teeth to
look like. with what's biologically and functionally sound. Definitely. And I'm glad you touched on
that topic because most of the times we hear this trend nowadays where small design,
10 crowns on the top, 10 crowns on the bottom, cut, and pretty much before and after.
Sometimes I look at them and I'm like, is it really before and after or before and before? What do
we do here with small design? So when we talk about a small design, the very first thing after I
take... the series of photographs, and I understand the patient's goals and concerns.
Once we establish that this is what we want to do, then we enter into the phase of let's start
designing your smile. And the very, very first thing that we do is establish the incisal edge
position. Once we have established the incisal edge position, and once we check for aesthetics,
phonetics, the rest just comes on its own. And all of this goes back to the lectures of dentures.
I don't know if you remember, though, when we were doing dentures, what was the first thing that
they made you do in dentures? Establish the incisal edge position. Establish in the wax rim where
you want the tip of the incisal to be. That follows the labial curvature that follows the vocal
corridors. And once you get all those parameters established and you have... verify the phonetics
and all the sounds, the S, the F, and all those sounds, then you can do a mock-up.
Most of the time, because I've done so many small designs now, that most of the mock-ups I'm doing
at the same time in-house, I don't typically send them to my ceramist,
because I've become, like, in 30 minutes, I can do a 10-teeth mock-up. So while the patients on
the chair, sometimes even a hygiene appointment, I can do a quick mock-up and show them, here's
just more or less how your teeth are going to look like. And I can tell you many, many times my
patients say, all right, when can we start? And it's incredible. Most of these cases were already
in my practice. I didn't even have to mark it. So when you're talking about doing the mock-up,
you're doing it manually in the mouth, but you could also take a scan, intraoral scan,
and then have the software do the mock-up digitally and show it to the patient too, right? You can
do it digitally as well. That's a different way of doing it as well. The other way of doing it is
there's a lot of small softwares now where you can take a picture and the software designs the 3D
year before and after. And you can show the patient in less than 30 seconds how they're going to
look before and after. But for some reason, I have had better case acceptance when I do it in the
mouth. I just get a little bit of Luxaflow, put it over the teeth. I shape those teeth. I establish
incisal exposition and I do the rest of the teeth. I show them in a mirror and it's incredible.
is it works very very good yeah i mean it's the real thing you're doing the real thing do you have
any do you have any experience with a facial scanner where you're actually taking a scan of the
movements from one movement all the way to the extreme and then the software builds in all the
other movements and then when you take it to the laboratory they can actually it's almost like an
articulator face bow transfer but it's done digitally are you using any of that I haven't, no,
I'm not using any of that just yet. I have seen it and I've seen great success with that. I have
some colleagues that are using it. I haven't dived into it just yet because I'm in so many things
at the moment and the practice, building the practice, building this and that, that I haven't had a
chance to do anything fun extra out of the routine. It sounds like everything you're doing is fun
because it sounds like you're loving. I mean, you're like, you have a dream situation because you
have the skill set, you have the personality, you have the knowledge and the passion and the love
for dentistry. I mean, you got a whole career ahead of you and it's just only going to get more fun
because you're doing what you love. And that's really an amazing thing. You know,
we talked a lot of clinical stuff and I want to get back to some clinical stuff. But before we do
that, I want to ask you about your renovation. You did some cosmetic renovation, talk about
cosmetics, to your actual facility. Right. Baseboard,
painting, basic stuff. But you mentioned to me prior to the interview that this actually had a big
impact on your practice. So tell us about the renovation, how your dad was involved, and also tell
us what you're seeing as far as the perception on the patient side. Yes, definitely. It actually
made a great impact. The office wasn't bad. The office wasn't looking bad. My office was built in
2015 and I took over last year. So it's been about a year now. And the equipment is not very old.
It's actually relatively, everything's relatively new. However, it had carpet in the hall.
Carpet wasn't bad, but it had a carpet on the hall. And the painting was a little darkish.
I don't know how to describe it. It wasn't. Very bright. Well, what we did is we took out the
carpet. We did lighter floors. Incredible how light floors, I know they're harder to maintain,
but they give this illusion that is bigger, cleaner, and a lot nicer.
We changed those black baseboards, the rubber baseboards. I'm not sure if you're familiar with
those. Yes, yes. Yeah, I don't even like those. We changed those rubber baseboards and we put the
conventional house white baseboards. And it looks like a whole new place.
It looks like a whole new place. Isn't that amazing how some relatively minor renovations could
give you a feeling of it just lightens up the place. It makes it a happier place. And it's amazing
how that perception is. It is amazing. Like I can tell you, every single patient that has come
through since we did the renovation, man, everyone asked me, is the place bigger?
What did you do? Everyone's asking me what I did. Everyone's asking me, what did you do to this
place? And it looks really, really good. What made you do that? Was it feedback you got from your
patients or it was your own feeling that it was time to do? It was my own feeling. I didn't like
the carpet for sure. Even though it wasn't in the operatories, I didn't like the carpet. I don't
think they're hygienic in my personal opinion. And it also gives an older type of feeling to the
practice. And I wanted to have a more modern, like today's practice. And your dad helped you with
that, which is really nice. Yes, yes, yes. He helped me with that. He actually, I would call,
he was like the project manager of the... of the process he he's uh and you were you were able to
keep the practice going while you were doing these renovations yeah everything was done on on the
evenings and weekends i'll tell you what working while um while keeping the practice open was hard
it was hard Because many Sundays we were wondering,
are we going to be able to open this on Monday? And it was a little stressful at times.
But we were able to keep the practice running. We were able to keep the patients. And we didn't
reschedule anything. And everything came out to be very, very nice. I'm very happy with the
renovations. Do you see yourself growing out of your space, the way your practice is growing?
Because you are, for someone who's, what, 31 years old, who's not been practicing that many years,
you're really developing a big following in your area, and that's Alabama, right? You're working
in... That's right. What part of Alabama? The city is called Mountain Brook, Alabama,
but most people are familiar with Birmingham, which is... It's literally one street that divides
Mountain Brook and Birmingham. So for people who are not from the state, they typically say
Birmingham. That way it's a little bit easier for them to orient themselves. But the actual city is
called Mountain Brook. And do you feel like you're growing out of that space? Or do you think you
have a good runway of time where you're going to be where you are? Well,
Phil, I actually have had to request help from a colleague in multiple occasions.
a colleague, a dentist colleague. She has helped me in multiple occasions and we are actually
booked for hygiene for the next three months. Yes, we are booked for the next three months. And I
have found myself last week doing an exam on, not an example, I do it like a consult on the waiting
area because we didn't have room. How many operatories do you have now? I only have four.
I wish I had five or six. I think the ideal number for everyone starting out, I think should be
six. You're the only dentist or you have an associate? I'm the only dentist, but I have had the
request. It wasn't a Saturday, a couple of Saturdays. We had to start opening Saturdays because I'm
Monday through Thursday and I didn't want to open Fridays because I have a 19 month old that I
don't want to miss too much from him. I want to be at home as much as possible. But if I open
Fridays, I'll have enough patients for Fridays. So you have four operatories, you said? Yes, sir.
Four operatories. Right. And you wish you had six, but you're one dentist. So even if you were
juggling two operatories and a hygienist had one or two, that's four. What do you need the other
two for? If I could have six rooms, my ideal case scenario would be to bring an associate,
have that associate working out of one or two rooms, maybe two rooms. I can work two rooms and I
can have a two hygiene room. Right. So do you plan on bringing an associate in?
I would love to, but I don't have enough space in my place right now.
I am looking to expand, but I didn't want to advertise it too much because it is in the process.
And I've actually looked at some places already. I've done some research and we will probably do
some changes in the next year. So maybe the next time we talk, I'll have more information for you.
That's a fast, fast growing situation over there, which is really amazing. And talking about
growing your practice, I want to touch on marketing for a second. So marketing a high end cosmetic
practice is very different from marketing general dentistry, where you do everything. And I know
you do a lot of different things, but. you want to consider yourself a high-end cosmetic practice.
And you also don't take insurance, right? You don't take third-party insurance. When I took over
the practice, there were about six, seven insurances. I can't remember at the moment right now. And
one of the first things that I did was I started one by one dropping all those insurances. And yes,
I became free for service. So what strategies have been most effective for you in attracting the
right patients and just as importantly, filtering out the patients that are not a good fit for your
practice? Let me tell you one thing I did. The person that helped me out, my, what do you call,
my mentor, told me since the beginning. And it's, if you choose the right city,
the rest comes along. The rest takes care of itself. Exactly. And Mountain Brook happens to be one
of the nicer, I would say, trying to find a better word for that, I guess.
Upscale. Upscale. Upscale, yes. Upscale suburbs of Birmingham. In Mountain Brook,
you can present virtually any treatment and patients say yes. Most of the times I just tell you,
we can do a filling on this tooth or we can do a ceramic inlay. And all of a sudden, I don't even
have to explain myself. And they say, let me get the inlay. I think it's going to last longer.
What's your selling point there on the inlay? There's a lot of things that I can present in between
inlays and resins. And one of them is being the, you eliminate the polymerization shrinkage.
Research shows that in direct restorations, last longer than direct restorations it less
sensitivity better aesthetics and it's just it's just it's just a better restoration if i were to
get a filling and it's a relatively a big filling i probably would want to get an inlay on that so
you have a lab that mills that and sends it to you you don't do a chair side do you i have a
milling machine in house oh you do I do have a milling machine. And so you do mill the smaller
restorations, inlays and onlays? You do that? Most of the smaller ones, I do mill in-house and we
keep them in-house if I have time. Lately, I will tell you in the past month, we haven't been able
to do so much of that because we have been busy. And that's another reason why we like to expand.
If I have an extra room, I could probably have the patient waiting while I'm doing something else.
But at the moment, I have actually been... doing them myself but not on the same not same day
treatment yeah now after hours so the materials that you use and there's so much to talk about here
we can't do it all in one one episode of course but You've got so much going on over there.
And you have a patient base that will basically listen to anything you suggest because they trust
you. You know, you've proved yourself to be a high-end cosmetic dentist. Are you part of this
incredibly fast-growing trend of zirconia when it comes to your materials that you're choosing for
your indirect? Because zirconia has gone a long way. You know, originally it was like strength,
strength, strength. But the downside was it didn't have the translucency that obviously lithium
disilicate has. are you finding that the newer zirconia materials are actually becoming the way to
go where you can there's no compromise now you get strength anesthetics in one material? I think
so. We're getting there. I'm not sure whether or not we are there already, but in the next five
years, we probably are going to be there. Still, I do a mixture of lithium disilicate in zirconia.
I do mill some zirconia as well, but I think I still rely a lot on lithium disilicate,
but I agree with your statement. I think zirconia is actually the way to go. where we're getting
there where it's just the way to go especially you know we can bond to zirconia i bond zirconia all
the time with really good success if you pick the right materials and if you do it with the right
process in the right steps you can actually i have actually done uh zirconia veneers with good
success right and and zirconia now the newer ones are allowing for if you have a oven that a speed
furnace, I should say, that could accommodate it. You can cut your sintering time down with
zirconia in half. They have, and I know if you're doing that with the lab, it's not that critical,
but if you're doing same day dentistry where you have your own, you're doing your own sintering,
they got it down to nine minutes on zirconia. You can actually mill, sinter,
polish, and stain and sandblast in 25 minutes, the whole thing.
You can do the whole thing in 25. You can probably do in one hour if you're fast enough, an hour
and 15 minutes, you can go in and out. Yes, in and out. If you have the right furnace and you have
the right milling machine, I guess you need all that stuff to go with it. But the whole concept of
same day delivery, that was a big selling point by obviously Densply,
which was CEREC. There's still a reason to have that. But generally speaking, what I'm hearing from
other... doctors that I interview, they're just sending it to the lab now. Like you said, you don't
even have time to do the milling in your own office, which means you want to do what you do best
and move on to the next patient. And then meanwhile, the patient will come back and you'll deliver
what the laboratory fabricates. Does that sound like what you're doing? I do agree with that. And I
actually think it's better if we send it to the lab. The only advantage would be not having a
temporary for a week on the patients. It's the only advantage I see on doing it on the same day.
But I agree with that. I agree that if you do what you know how to do and you send it to the lab,
I think that's just fine. The only reason why I got into the milling machine is because when I
purchased the practice, I was like, well, let me try all these new things. Let me try that. Let me
try this. But if I go back and analyze everything again,
I probably wouldn't have purchased the milling machine. I probably would have. I think I can do
just fine without a milling machine. Yeah, and I think that's what a lot of dentists are finding.
It was a really exciting concept, and it's certainly taken off. I mean,
there are a lot of dentists that have chairside milling. They advertise it. You get your crown the
same day. But in reality, when you look at... The practicality behind it in the real world,
a dentist wants to do dentistry. They don't want to do lab work. I agree with that. Yeah. And we're
getting to the point where 3D printers are now going to be able to kick out some really strong
restorations down the road. They're already doing this in Europe. They're printing zirconia. I
don't know how good it is in Europe, but they're doing it. There's going to come a time where
you're going to be able to print these crowns right in your office, and they're going to be
amazingly strong and consistent as far as fit. Definitely. Yeah.
I can't wait for that time. 3D printing, I think, is going to be a lot better than milling for
sure. Yeah. I mean, you're 31 now. By the time you're in the middle of your career,
it's going to be completely different with what you're doing now. That's how fast things are
moving. And by the time you're at the end of your career, God knows what dentistry is going to be
like. I mean, it's going to be AI is going to have such a big impact in it. It's going to be pretty
remarkable. But listen, there's a lot more we can talk about, Dr. Abrahante, and it's really exciting
to hear. what you've done since the last time we talked. We'll have you on again. And thanks so
much for taking the time to join us. Thank you so much for having me. And I really enjoyed the
conversation.