‘It gives people their life back’: Advanced Family Dental shifting its practice with a focus on more complex dental care – Albert Lea Tribune

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The company’s software allows the dentists to customize their patient’s smiles and lets patients see what their smiles will look like based on the customizations they choose. Sarah Stultz/Albert Lea Tribune

Advanced Family Dental is utilizing 3-D printing for things such as veneers and dentures, as seen here. Sarah Stultz/Albert Lea Tribune

Drs. Rachel Nolander-Poppel and Tricia Nelson said the work they are doing has helped people regain their confidence and improve their health. Provided

Advanced Family Dental is using advances in technology to provide more complex dentistry services to the community that previously were only available in bigger cities.

As it approaches its 15th year in Albert Lea, the business is shifting its focus to these more complex cosmetic and restorative cases, though it will still provide regular dentistry services as well.

With this shift, the company this fall will rebrand itself as Advanced Focus Dental.

“Most of what we’re really putting a lot of time and attention into is just really thorough, comprehensive care for adults,” said Dr. Tricia Nelson, one of two dentists at the office. “Basically, whatever condition somebody comes in — whether they have healthy teeth and they just want to improve their smile or they’re a complete mess and they don’t know what to do — we have solutions to fit everybody to get them a point of better health and a smile that they’re happy with.”

Nelson said she and founding dentist Dr. Rachel Nolander-Poppel are utilizing 3-D printing and other software to design smiles on a computer, allowing the patient to get a glimpse ahead of time what their new smile will look like and make adjustments as needed.

The software allows the dentists to pull in digital files of a patient’s mouth and design the new smile from scratch, customizing everything for a patient in terms of where the teeth will go, what the shape of the teeth will be, how big the teeth are and other factors.

“If we don’t like something, we can make as many changes as we need to before we commit to doing anything, which is great,” Nelson said, giving the patient reassurance that they are getting exactly the end result they want. “There’s no guessing games about what the outcome will be.”

The technology also pulls up a digital picture of the individual’s face, aligns it with the scans of the mouth and allows the patient to see a digital mockup of what the teeth will look like.

Using the 3-D printer, they can also let people touch and feel what the teeth will look like.

“I can tell you from experience that a digital mockup looking at a picture of yourself versus actually getting to see it, feel it, look at it in a mirror is very different,” Nelson said. “This gives us a chance to get some up close and personal experience for yourself of what a new smile could look like.”

Nolander-Poppel is going to be a test patient herself for veneers, which go on the front of the teeth. Some patients may need more preparation than others for veneers, while some may not need much work at all.

They also utilize the 3-D printing for dentures, which Nelson said provides a big savings on time it would otherwise take to send them off to a lab and reduces the number of visits for the patient.

This is especially helpful for families of loved ones in a nursing home who may misplace their dentures. The files are all kept digitally, so if one denture is lost, the dentists sill have the file and can simply make a new one. The base is printed separately from the teeth, and then they are combined and hand-painted.

Nelson said she had one patient in memory care whose family would call every couple months saying that their loved one had lost their teeth again. What would have traditionally taken three or four appointments and at least a month to prepare new teeth can now be done in one appointment and get back to the patient much quicker.

The women said they have enjoyed the restorative work they have done, helping people regain confidence that they had otherwise lost. Many said they never thought it was possible to look the way they did when the work was done.

Nelson talked of one patient who went from being more reclusive to establishing friendships and becoming more social after her teeth were completed.

“This kind of work is fun because it gives people their life back,” Nelson said.

Nolander-Poppel said she and Nelson enjoy this level of dentistry and being able to provide it in Albert Lea.

She said they have people who come into their office who assume their only option is going to be dentures. While that may sometimes be the case, she wanted to express that many times that is not the case.

“No one is beyond hope,” she said. “There are ways we can help you feel confident, and be healthy.”

They said they have received many positive comments from patients they have worked with, whose only regret is that they didn’t try it sooner.

“Dentists are artists,” Nolander-Poppel said of the expanded services. “It’s why a lot choose dentistry over other fields of medicine. This allows us to put our artistry skills to work every day, which is great.”

With the shifted focus in the practice, the dental office is no longer taking new patients under the age of 10, though it will continue with already established pediatric patients.