Wear your loupes

A while ago I did some clinical demonstrating and was amazed that none of the students I was teaching used magnification.

When I asked them about it they told me that they all had loupes (it was a requirement of enrolment) but they’d gotten out of the habit of using them. I told them that if they did not use their loupes on every patient starting tomorrow, I would refuse to mark off their work. That fixed the problem instantly.

But there are also many practicing dentists who don’t use loupes or only use them very occasionally.

I use loupes for everything, even extractions and polishing teeth. Here are four reasons why I think loupes are essential and that you should always wear loupes too.

First, the quality of your work will improve. I still remember the shock I got when I started wearing loupes. Fillings that I previously thought were fantastic suddenly looked rough and poorly finished. It was scary and I had to rethink my polishing routine. Loupes definitely improved my dentistry.

Second, you can work faster. With greater ability to see comes greater precision and confidence. For example, with loupes you can see the difference between decayed dentine and stained dentine. That means you don’t have to keep picking up a probe or using caries detector to check.

Third, patients like the fact that you wear loupes. They equate loupes with greater precision and higher quality. They rightly believe that you’re delivering better work and care more about the results.

Fourth, if your loupes have a light attached you don’t have to keep adjusting the overhead light. The need to reach up every time the patient moves is gone forever.

There’s a short learning curve with loupes. For example, you need to never look at things outside the focal range or you’ll give yourself eye strain and a headache.

But, there’s no question in my mind: you should wear loupes for every procedure on every patient.