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January 2010 | Dental Products Report The take-aways Taking ProDrive for a spin The Set up “The air-driven highspeed handpiece. Perhaps no instrument in the history of dentistry conjures more negative images and fears from patients. However, despite the fears it inspires, the handpiece is frequently a necessary evil in the everyday practice of dentistry. Here, I discuss a product I believe is leading the way in the next evolution of handpieces. ”—Dr. John Flucke, Team Lead  Photo: ProDrive Lasers have changed the way tooth preparation is performed in a variety of clinical situations, but between the cost of the devices and the individual cases that present themselves in the everyday practice of dentistry, they are not a panacea. Finances and cases dictate that the air-driven highspeed handpiece is still the method used for the vast majority of dental procedures involving the removal of tooth structure. Handpiece status quo It’s interesting that since the development of the air-driven highspeed in the middle of the 20th century little has been done to change or improve the device. Oh sure, we’ve had some minor updates. Things like ceramic, lube-free bearings have come along to reduce the damage done to the devices during sterilization, but that improvement is really a decrease in required maintenance and does nothing to change the clinical efficiency or overall patient experience. In the 1980s, we had fiberoptic lights, but those have been rendered moot for many of us who are now using some type of accessory lighting attached to our surgical telescopes. My Orascoptic Zeon Discovery is so bright I don’t even use track lights anymore. We’ve had changes in grips and turbine speeds, but can you really remember anything Earth shattering—the kind of improvement you can really point to as changing things? Me neither. The only drastic improvement in handpiece technology has been the development and implementation of the electric handpiece. For those using them, I hear great feedback with relatively few complaints, but their market penetration is still much lower than traditional air-driven units. Enter the ProDrive So, you can imagine my response when I was approached by ProDrive Systems last year and asked to test drive their handpiece. Although they do sell handpieces, ProDrive is mainly a turbine company. Their sales model is to sell upgrade turbines at a price comparable to the cost of a turbine from the original manufacturer. Big deal you say? You can get replacement turbines from a variety of providers. This is true, but you can’t get ProDrive turbines from anywhere but authorized ProDrive providers, and, trust me, you’ll want to check them out. My clinical test drive was pretty simple. I took a brand new (out of the box) original manufacturer handpiece and a new round shank bur. I compared that with a brand new (out of the box) ProDrive upgraded handpiece with the same style new ProDrive bur. The handpieces were identical other than the turbines. I spent two weeks running the test. I prepared all crowns using the two handpieces in a side-by-side comparison. I would perform half the lingual reduction with one handpiece and then the other half with the other. I repeated this process on every surface. Although I was skeptical before the trial began, I quickly was aware of a noticeable difference in efficiency with the ProDrive turbine. Setting itself apart What makes the ProDrive turbine so different is it uses a special chuck design. Rather than having a chuck that is round and accepts a round-shanked bur, the ProDrive chuck is triangular and uses a bur with a triangular shank. While this difference seems slight, the principle is profound. A round chuck with round shank provides slippage in the way the bur is gripped. Although you cannot feel this—I never noticed a feeling of slippage in all my years of clinical care—it definitely occurs. However, when a triangular chuck and a triangular shank are used, the bur cannot slip inside the chuck. It is locked in mechanically. This allows all the energy developed by the turbine to be delivered to the actual process of tooth preparation, and thereby allows the ProDrive turbine to cut more efficiently with less chatter. CONTINUED ON NEXT PAGE
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