Dr. Nathan Baxter, DDS

First thing, please, everyone, just have a look at this photo. Just think to yourself about about what may be wrong with it. If you're like me, the first thing you notice is this poor gentleman's missing a tooth. Right? Right up front, interrupts his smile. And then if you if you stare at it for just a few moments longer, my goodness, his whole left eyebrow is not there. Right? We can't help it. We're we're this social animal, and life is this this social experience. And we make perceptions about each other in our subconscious before we even get to know one another. And it's not just the social aspect. There's a fascinating study called the leisure world cohort study they did in Laguna Hills, California. They learned that those that were missing all their teeth had a thirty percent increased risk of early death compared to those that didn't. And for men that were missing all their teeth, there was a ninety percent increased risk of developing dementia compared to those who who had allergy. Extremely profound effect on on our health, generally as well. Meet Randy. Randy's a wonderful individual. Randy has no teeth. And before meeting NUVIA and our team there, Randy had not left his home in two years. Two years. It almost wouldn't have been possible if it weren't for modern technology and our ability to order everything and have it delivered to us. Two years, the shame was so overwhelming. The discomfort so overwhelming that he felt trapped, right, in his own home. And now the American College of Prosthodontist estimates thirty six million Americans alone, just in our country. Thirty six million Americans are missing all their teeth. It's like one in ten people. It's a massive, massive problem. Right? But fortunately for people like Randy, the dental world for decades now has actually been hard at work innovating solutions to solve these problems, one of which is the dental implant. So in the nineteen fifties and sixties, a renowned orthopedic surgeon, from Sweden, doctor Branemark, he discovered that titanium fuses to bone really well. And from that, we get the the invention of the dental implant, which is really nothing more than a titanium screw that gets placed into the jawbone and becomes an anchor. And you can attach something to that such as a tooth in this case. Unfortunately, it didn't stop there. By the time we get to the nineteen nineties, further innovation is done. And doctor Malo in Portugal begins experimenting and and trying to solve the problem of the full mouth. Through the nineties and early two thousands, doctor Malo and his team developed what has now become known as the all in four treatment concept. And what they learned was you don't need to just place one implant for every tooth to help someone. You don't have to do multiple procedures even to help someone. What they learned was in one procedure, they could place four implants strategically throughout someone's jaw. And to those implants, we could really immediately attach teeth. We could get something back in place for that person. It's groundbreaking. Just just a tremendous addition, to the dental innovation and the progress of of dentistry and restoring people's smiles at the time. And the way it worked was prior to someone's surgery, we would prepare a denture. Right? Traditional denture. Pink and white acrylic, like plastic, if you don't know what acrylic is, like a like a fake nail. Right? We'd make a denture for someone. We'd have that ready to go, and then we'd bring them in and we'd we'd do their implant surgery. And we'd place, you know, dental implants around their arch. And then when we were done with the procedure, we would take that denture. We'd take, like, a dental handpiece, and we'd start to shape it, remove some stuff, get rid of the the pallet, drill some holes through it, add some metal components. The whole point was so we could convert that denture into just a temporary set of teeth for this person, and we would attach it right away. And they would live with that for four to six months or so, sometimes longer, depending on the the needs of of the case and and an individual's needs. And then after that, they would start all the work over again of, now let's make permanent set of teeth. Let's make final teeth. You know, teeth made of strong, normal, permanent materials like the ceramics, like zirconia, things like that that are used in dentistry modernly. And this this all in four treatment concept has been revolutionary. It's been wonderful. The one thing it lacks is this period of time that we require someone to wear this temporary and the experience that they go through with that. Because this is made of acrylic and not and it's not a very strong material, these things break. They actually crack. Teeth pop off. They break regularly. For some people, out of my own experience, no matter how good of a job we did making it, some people, that prosthetic, that temporary just kept breaking. And it was almost like every Friday, we had a standing appointment at five PM when everyone wanted to go home for the day, and there was a wedding tomorrow, and and my teeth would break. Right? So it's just this miserable, miserable experience and really kind of a letdown when you're trying to help someone step out of, you know, being reclusive, right, in their own life, not even not even wanting to show up in their own life and trying to give them the stepping stone to rejoining the world and then to have to go through this this turbulent experience. And so when Nuvia formed, we really sat down and asked the question, how can we how can we get rid of this experience? Do we have to have this experience where we know it's gonna break? What can we do? Right? What what can be done? What's possible? We have computer aided design software now, CAD. We have computer aided manufacturing. Right? CAM. That's that's what CAD CAM is if if you weren't aware. And we now have the ability to plan out someone's entire prosthetic plan before we even do a procedure. I mean, we can precisely plan exactly what we hope to have happen, and then we can make it with a high degree of precision, and we can make it out of much stronger materials than acrylic. And so the ensuing result of all that work, which really represented many years of of combined, clinical experience, patient treatment experience, millions of dollars in in investment, NUVIA has finally been able to make a clinical workflow that allows us to do a dental implant procedure and give someone a permanent set of teeth the next day within twenty four hours. Essentially taking that whole experience of having to wear temporary teeth and all that comes along with it and just remove it. Just pull it out of the equation and not even need it. And it's been tremendous. And Randy was one of the, you know, beneficiaries of that of that treatment. And we love to show the after because the contrast. Right? And Randy is just one of of thousands of people that have, you know, been able to experience this. And I can tell you that he's happier. I can tell you that he feels healthier. I can tell you that he's much more engaged in his social life, and and he's a great example of of what really can be. And so that's our innovation our innovation. NUVIA is a wonderful organization. We support a growing number of dental implant clinics across this country, with a shared mission of making this available to everyone. And you gotta remember, there's millions. Right? I mean, it's staggering the number of people that that need something like this. And if you try to take that number and you think, yeah, what are all the what are all the amazing things that these people are not doing or will never do because their life will come and go, and they're trapped by how they feel. Right? They're maybe trapped in their home or they're trapped in in in their daily routine, and they have some amazing gift or idea to give to the world and they never give it because of something like this. I really think the world would be incredibly, changed if more and more people were able to, you know, engage and and not be not be afraid of of their own smile, right, or the lack thereof. And so that's that's really our mission is to continue to grow, make this available to everyone, and I thank you for letting me share that with you.