Do you feel your work has improved with higher magnification?

[Faux]

I had several people recommend against going higher than 2.5x magnification. I was a bit surprised to hear this, especially since they were recent graduates.

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[ncide]

I went with 4.3x and I don't know if I should have gone with 4.8x. I asked a few docs DT and everyone recommended to go high.

http://www.dentaltown.com/MessageBoard/thread.aspx?s=2&f=187&t=276338&r=4318417

 

[THS]

I had several people recommend against going higher than 2.5x magnification. I was a bit surprised to hear this, especially since they were recent graduates.

I started with 3.3 and I wish I went a little higher. I'll probably be getting 4x+ next pair I get.

 

[DrJeff]

I started off at 2.5x and stayed at 2.5x for roughly my 1st 10 years of practice unless I was doing some endo when I grabbed the 4.3x loupes I also had.

I developed after about 10 years a small crack in the lens of my 2.5x pair around where the loupe insert was inserted into the lens (I'm an Orascoptic through the lens loupe wearer) from having not always carefully placed my loupes into the storage box in my desk drawer when I'm done wearing them That prompted me to start wearing my 4.3x loupes for every procedure for the roughly 2 weeks it took me to send them back to Orascoptic, and have them replace my cracked lens, and get them back to me. Now, for the last 5+ years, I rarely wear my 2.5x loupes (unless I am doing something where I want the larger field of vision they have vs my 4.3x loupes) and am seriously contemplating getting a higher magnification pair when I go out to the ADA annual meeting in Denver in a few weeks, if I can find a pair that has the proper combination of comfort (frame weight on my nose basically), field of vision and magnification.

The one thing that I would caution people to think about, especially early in their careers, is going too high magnification where often your field of view is decreased compared to lower magnification loupes, because you can really at times zone in so much on 1 particular tooth or 2 adjacent teeth with limited field of view higher magnification that you can end up not paying as much attention the the occlusion or even occlussal wear/disease on other nearby teeth that often play a role into what ends of defining what constitutes a successful long term restoration vs a failed restoration - I strongly feel that as your clinical experience grows, which often takes years to do so, since you need to be able to observe your work in a patients mouth for a long enough time frame to see some things fail, even when you're sure you did it "text book perfect", that the more you can see width of the mouth wise is often of greater importance than some of the extra detail you can pick up on about a margin of a prep via higher magnification - Just my 2 cents.....

 

[jaf004]

thats a great question, are the 2.5x standard on the dental school loupes? at tufts we got orascoptic with a standardized magnification which I am not sure of. But now that I actually have hand skills I feel like I could have done better off with larger magnification.

 

[Faux]

I started off at 2.5x and stayed at 2.5x for roughly my 1st 10 years of practice unless I was doing some endo when I grabbed the 4.3x loupes I also had.

I developed after about 10 years a small crack in the lens of my 2.5x pair around where the loupe insert was inserted into the lens (I'm an Orascoptic through the lens loupe wearer) from having not always carefully placed my loupes into the storage box in my desk drawer when I'm done wearing them That prompted me to start wearing my 4.3x loupes for every procedure for the roughly 2 weeks it took me to send them back to Orascoptic, and have them replace my cracked lens, and get them back to me. Now, for the last 5+ years, I rarely wear my 2.5x loupes (unless I am doing something where I want the larger field of vision they have vs my 4.3x loupes) and am seriously contemplating getting a higher magnification pair when I go out to the ADA annual meeting in Denver in a few weeks, if I can find a pair that has the proper combination of comfort (frame weight on my nose basically), field of vision and magnification.

The one thing that I would caution people to think about, especially early in their careers, is going too high magnification where often your field of view is decreased compared to lower magnification loupes, because you can really at times zone in so much on 1 particular tooth or 2 adjacent teeth with limited field of view higher magnification that you can end up not paying as much attention the the occlusion or even occlussal wear/disease on other nearby teeth that often play a role into what ends of defining what constitutes a successful long term restoration vs a failed restoration - I strongly feel that as your clinical experience grows, which often takes years to do so, since you need to be able to observe your work in a patients mouth for a long enough time frame to see some things fail, even when you're sure you did it "text book perfect", that the more you can see width of the mouth wise is often of greater importance than some of the extra detail you can pick up on about a margin of a prep via higher magnification - Just my 2 cents.....

Hows your view with 4?

 

[fogorvostan]

Everyone at MWU AZ starting this year got 3.5x (used to be 2.5x). All of our faculty grade at 3.5x so it makes sense that we should see what they see.

 

[ktran17]

I'm not sure if it's my philosophy but I tend to treatment plan more things compared to my classmates. I attribute it to doing my exams with my 3.3 ev loupes. How can you recommend something you can't see?