Choosing the right kind of Dental Implants for your practice with Donald I. Rothenberg DMD

Host: Ladies and gentlemen, this is the Dental Up Podcast, brought to you by Keating Dental Lab, a full service, award-winning dental laboratory. Each week, you’ll learn tips and techniques from real world dentists, bringing you in-depth interviews, motivating stories, current events, and sports.
Here’s your host, Shaun Keating.

Shaun Keating: Hey, everyone, Shaun here. Welcome to another episode of the Dental Up Podcast. Our guest this week is a graduate from the Tufts University School of Dental Medicine. He enrolled in the first ever longterm continuing education implant program at Harvard University School of Dental Medicine, and he graduated with a certification in implant dentistry. He dedicated his practice largely to dental implantology, tissue regeneration, and implant prosthetics, making him an expert in implant dentistry and internationally known instructor in the subject.
Currently practicing from Marblehead, Massachusetts, please welcome Dr. Donald Rothenberg, DMD. How’s it going, Dr. Rothenberg?

Dr.Rothenberg: It’s going good, it’s going good, Shaun, how are you?

Shaun Keating: Oh, dude, that’s so cool. I love it, man, you’re out in Massachusetts. Whenever I talk to you on the phone it’s like “Send me some lobsters.” I love those cold lobster tails from the cold waters out there.

Dr.Rothenberg: We have plenty of lobsters now and they had a good lobster catch this summer. The lobster fisherman, so they’ll drop by at like 3:30 in the afternoon with a bag full of lobsters.

Shaun Keating: Oh, man, I’d be sitting there with a bucket of butter, man, ready to go.

Dr.Rothenberg: That’s what we do, that’s what we do.

Shaun Keating: That’s awesome.

Dr.Rothenberg: They have a special pot that we put on the barbecue and let the barbecue heat them through, and we can cook like, I don’t know, maybe four or five at a time. And then we take those out and eat them, and then while we’re eating those, there’s five more cooking.

Shaun Keating: Yeah, oh, yeah, man, those are pretty small ones. We have our California-

Dr.Rothenberg: No, they’re a pound and-a-half, two pounds.

Shaun Keating: Oh, that’s really nice. I love them. They’re just a sweeter tasting lobster from all the other ones, that you can just distinctly tell of a Maine lobster.

Dr.Rothenberg: You can tell when they come out of the water the same day, it’s an unbelievable difference. But some of the fish we get here is really, really fresh. And I’m not a fish connoisseur, that kind of stuff, but you can tell a lobster that just came out of the water. It just tastes better.

Shaun Keating: Oh, it does. It’s just so sweet. They even say the smaller lobsters are tastier than “Oh, I want the big one,” but boil them and then putting them on the grill, but to poach-

Dr.Rothenberg: Yeah, you can put them in a steamer, just steam ’em.

Shaun Keating: Yeah, that’s neat stuff.

Dr.Rothenberg: You could actually cook one in a microwave.

Shaun Keating: Oh, you’re kidding.

Dr.Rothenberg: No, but you got to put it in a plastic bag in case it explodes.

Shaun Keating: Oh, jeez.

Dr.Rothenberg: It creates quite a mess.

Shaun Keating: Oh, I bet, man, that’s so funny.
Well, hey, I like to start off always, with talking a little bit about sports. Now, you’re in a sports haven up there, man, and I love going out to the Yankee meeting and seeing the stadium and everything else.

Dr.Rothenberg: Right now, we’re really in the thick of it. The Super Bowl is coming up with the Pats, hopefully.

Shaun Keating: So, you’re not a-

Dr.Rothenberg: The Red Sox just won the World Series.

Shaun Keating: Yes.

Dr.Rothenberg: The Celtics are really looking good. And I’m not a hockey fan but I think the Bruins are doing okay. I never got into hockey.

Shaun Keating: Yeah, me, a little bit here with the Ducks and stuff, because, you know, our-

Dr.Rothenberg: For me, if I played the sport when I was a kid, then I really get into ’em. If I ever did baseball, basketball, football. Auto racing I did when I got older. Auto racing is a passion with me. Yeah, we go back a long time.

Shaun Keating: How long we been together? How many years? I think …

Dr.Rothenberg: I first met you when you were managing the department in that … We won’t name the other lab, but … managing that department, and every time I had a problem, a question or something, and I would call and I’d get you. And you’d just go like “Okay, man, I’ll take care of it.” And you took care of it.

Shaun Keating: Yeah, I know.

Dr.Rothenberg: Every time. So then I started everything to Attention: Shaun.

Shaun Keating: Yup, I remember. 30 years I think we’ve been [crosstalk 00:04:41].

Dr.Rothenberg: I don’t remember what it was but it’s before my divorce so it must have been more than 17, 18 years ago that you opened your own lab.

Shaun Keating: Yeah, that’s it, man.

Dr.Rothenberg: And you called me and told me. I said, “I’m coming with you.”

Shaun Keating: Yeah, you did. That’s so call. I just remember Rothenberg. I always thought like the [Rothchild 00:05:01]. What nationality is Rothenberg?

Dr.Rothenberg: I think my ancestors, some of them came from Germany. I know some came from Poland and Russia. There’s a town in Germany called Rotenburg. It’s almost the same exact spelling. I think that’s where they came from. They used to come over and stop at Ellis Island, and what they would do is, they had no identification, and they’d ask the people where they were from. And maybe somebody said Rotenburg, and they wrote down Rothenberg, and now there are a gazillion Rothenbergs around.

Shaun Keating: Oh, that’s a trip, man. That’s a great story, there. Oh, that’s awesome.
You’re not a big Patriots fan. What, you’re a Packers fan? How’d that happen?

Dr.Rothenberg: No, I’m a Patriots fan. I’m definitely a Patriots fan.

Shaun Keating: Oh, I thought-

Dr.Rothenberg: I just don’t follow hockey.

Shaun Keating: Oh, okay.

Dr.Rothenberg: I’ll follow any sport if it’s a seventh game or something like that.

Shaun Keating: Absolutely.

Dr.Rothenberg: I’m a sports crazy idiot.

Shaun Keating: Wow, that’s so cool. Well, that’s awesome, man.
Okay, well, hey, let’s Dental Up, Dr. Rothenberg. I’d like to start off, I like to ask, why did you get into dentistry and at what point did you think “I want to be a dentist?”

Dr.Rothenberg: I don’t know. I really didn’t do well in high school. I was mostly into sports. Of course, I didn’t do well. I grew up in New York City and I went to school in New York City. My graduating class in high school was 1,700 kids.

Shaun Keating: Oh, you’re kidding me.

Dr.Rothenberg: You got lost. You just got lost. So I got to college, long story short, I broke my leg in the first football game that … I went on a scholarship …

Shaun Keating: You’re kidding.

Dr.Rothenberg: … To the University of Bridgeport, and I got clipped and broke my leg. And my major at that point, I wanted to be a marine biologist. What does an 18-year-old kid know? I wanted to be Lloyd Bridges.

Shaun Keating: There you go.

Dr.Rothenberg: This professor, I know this now, this professor, [Gene Summers 00:06:56] took me under his wing, and within the first semester I was getting all As.

Shaun Keating: Yeah.

Dr.Rothenberg: Everybody was looking at me like “What’s going on with this kid?” And, I got three years of straight As, and really good dental boards and Tufts accepted me early admission. I entered dental school when I was 20 years old.

Shaun Keating: No kidding.

Dr.Rothenberg: I was a baby.

Shaun Keating: Tell me a little bit about Tufts. I’ve had quite a few dentists that went to Tufts. Tell me a little bit about your college and where you went to college. I know you went to Tufts and-

Dr.Rothenberg: I went to college in Connecticut. I went to college at a small school. It was the only college I got into. I got in on a football/baseball/track scholarship.

Shaun Keating: No kidding.

Dr.Rothenberg: And then I broke my leg, so that was screwed. And I figured, “Okay, well, I’m gonna be gone,” and this guy literally spoon fed me everything that I needed to do. And since I was in a cast, in a wheelchair, I just listened to him.

Shaun Keating: Perfect.

Dr.Rothenberg: It was awful, but I was getting As. It’s like the thing, if you’re a competitive person, once you start doing well, you build up your confidence and you’re doing better. The second year I walked into a course and the professor said “I’m never giving an A in this course.” And my brain at that point said, “Well, I’m getting an A in this course.” It was an art course, art history course, and I got an A in the course.

Shaun Keating: That’s awesome.

Dr.Rothenberg: That’s the way I am. I can be really competitive. And I went to Tufts with people who were 25 and 30 years old. They were graduates of Yale and Dartmouth and Harvard. I went “Wow, this is gonna be interesting.”

Shaun Keating: But then you went off to Tufts there. Tell me a little bit about Tufts. What was it like on there? What’d you take out of it?

Dr.Rothenberg: It was good. It was 1967. The only thing that was bad, and we all questioned it, is, did we go to dental school because of the war in Vietnam? ‘Cause if you went to dental, medical, or law school, it kept you out of the service.

Shaun Keating: Oh, you’re kidding, I never heard that.

Dr.Rothenberg: If you were of my generation, you would know it. I don’t know if that was in my subconscious, but I just kind of played along with this professor at Bridgeport said “Well, why don’t you apply to dental school or medical school and see if you get in?”

Shaun Keating: I always heard if you had flat feet, man, they wouldn’t let you in.

Dr.Rothenberg: Yeah, I don’t know about that but I applied to a whole bunch of dental schools, Columbia, Penn, what else? NYU. And I got into all of them.

Shaun Keating: No kidding.

Dr.Rothenberg: But I really wanted to be in Boston. I really wanted to be in Boston.

Shaun Keating: That’s awesome. And then you-

Dr.Rothenberg: Boston’s a great town, especially if you’re 20 years old.

Shaun Keating: Oh, yeah, it’s fun times, man. I love it. Faneuil Hall and every-

Dr.Rothenberg: We had to study, so it was either party heavy or we were studying. I mean, I never worked so hard in my life. I worked while I went to school. I worked at Boston City Hospital in the blood gas lab one night a week, from six in the evening until six the next morning. And then one weekend a month from Friday at five until Sunday at two.

Shaun Keating: No kidding, dang.

Dr.Rothenberg: They paid us and that money helped me get through school.

Shaun Keating: I know you went to a program at Harvard, too. I have quite a few doctors from Harvard. I had this old guy, Wallace Gardner, Dr. Gardner. He got me into penny stocks back in the ’80s, ’90s.

Dr.Rothenberg: Oh, God.

Shaun Keating: I’m like “Oh, yeah.” I bought ’em for eight cents and then two years later it was at 10 cents.

Dr.Rothenberg: Yeah, right.

Shaun Keating: But he had-

Dr.Rothenberg: Now, Harvard was an interesting opportunity. I was already in practice for a while. I opened my first office in Saugus, a small town north of Boston in 1972, and I stayed there five years. And then a hospital gave me an opportunity to move into a brand new medical building that they built right next door to the hospital, so I could just walk over and do my surgeries over there.

Shaun Keating: No kidding.

Dr.Rothenberg: And I stayed there for 10 years. And my kids were really little, and I realized that i wasn’t seeing my kids grow up, so I started looking for more office space and I had a big office there. I had two other dentists working for me and about 20 people, and I just was going out of my mind. As you know, managing a lot of people is tough.

Shaun Keating: Oh, yeah.

Dr.Rothenberg: It really is tough.

Shaun Keating: No kidding.

Dr.Rothenberg: I never learned how to do it. To this day, to this day. So, we had this big house in Marblehead and we had this finished basement, needed to be made, changed, and we made it into an office. I didn’t know what was gonna happen. I took my hygienist, an assistant, secretary … Two assistants [inaudible 00:11:57]. It worked out for me.

Shaun Keating: Yeah, that’s a unique practice. I remember when you got that. And it’s your house but you built your office in the basement, right?

Dr.Rothenberg: Yeah, it’s a multilevel house. It’s one, two, three, four, four and-a-half levels.

Shaun Keating: No kidding.

Dr.Rothenberg: A contemporary, so the whole, what you consider the basement, the outside walls were finished with just sheetrock and painted white and the floor was an indoor/outdoor carpet. And the kids used to come down here and play on their Big Wheels.

Shaun Keating: Okay.

Dr.Rothenberg: Or basketball and stuff. So we had moved here, and I was at the hospital working, and there was this opportunity at Harvard. It was like, just a [inaudible 00:12:43]. The first cost would be every Wednesday night, I think it was, or something like that, for eight weeks, maybe 10 weeks. And it was about implants, so I said, “Jeez, I wanna learn about that.” I was doing a lot of perio surgery and stuff, “I wanna learn, see what’s going on with implants,” so I took the course. It was given at Harvard, Paul Schnitman taught it. He was a character. He is a character, and he made us take a test at the end of the course to go on to the next phase.
But anyway, I took it pretty seriously, and we were seeing people like Gerry Niznick, [Lenny Linkauer 00:13:21] coming to Harvard. Branemark came, Hilt Tatum came. Everybody came ’cause they wanted to all speak at Harvard. They wanted to add it to their resume.

Shaun Keating: Exactly.

Dr.Rothenberg: And I was in the first year of this program, so we saw everybody. I didn’t realize what an opportunity it was until later. But it was a three-year program, it was every Wednesday for three years, and it was really cool. I don’t think they have it anymore. I know they don’t have it anymore.

Shaun Keating: Yeah. I love that-

Dr.Rothenberg: And it wasn’t even expensive back in the time. Now it would be a fortune.

Shaun Keating: Oh, I bet. I love the Harvard Club, man. Every time I go into Boston, end up going, eating at the Harvard Club and man-

Dr.Rothenberg: Harvard’s a different world. It’s like another world.

Shaun Keating: Yeah, it is, like from the 1700s or something. It’s just so crazy and then-

Dr.Rothenberg: I’m now a Harvard alumni so I get all the Harvard junk and the donation stuff and all that, but I get any and all benefits like football games and things. Anyway, it’s just like, you put down Harvard and people hear that and they go “Harvard, you went to Harvard, you must be good.”

Shaun Keating: I remember my boys, I wanted them to go for Harvard football. When it comes time to it and they’re high school it’s like, “Well, you gotta be a 4.0 and there’s no …”

Dr.Rothenberg: Yeah, you gotta be a pretty good student and football player.

Shaun Keating: Yeah, the Cs weren’t gonna cut it, and then, there’s no scholarships. You gotta pay for everything. We didn’t have two nickles to rub together, really, that if you’re going to go to college, boys, you’re gonna get a scholarship and I don’t think it’s at Harvard.

Dr.Rothenberg: Yeah, that’s tough. But, I did this program, and it was from ’85 to ’87, and somewhere in ’86 I decided, okay, I’m ready to do my first implant. And started reading the journals and saw this little implant company, or, about a little implant, that you made the osteotomy, the hole in the bone, you did it by hand. Way back then, in the mid ’80s, with Branemark and all those people, it was really, don’t hurt the bone, don’t burn the bone, don’t burn the bone. And I figured if you did it by hand, you couldn’t hurt the bone, there would just be no way, there was no friction.
I called up this 800 number, I got this guy on the phone, and it was Tom Driskell, the inventor of the Bicon Implant.

Shaun Keating: Okay.

Dr.Rothenberg: And Tom and I became fast and furious friends. I might have been maybe 40, Tom was 60. He used to come up to Boston, we used to make videos, and then Stryker bought them, and I lectured for Stryker all over the place. I don’t know how those guys do it, it’s really hard. It’s hard to run a practice and lecture and all that stuff, and Stryker was very generous in reimbursing me, or paying me, whatever you wanna call it. But, I wouldn’t see my kids and being on the road, I just didn’t like it.
And then, Norm Shepherd and Vin Morgan bought the implant business from Stryker and started Bicon. And Bicons’ right here in Boston. Without traffic, it’s a 20-minute drive.

Shaun Keating: That’s crazy. All my East Coast doctors, they’re all into Bicon, and we’re like “Why the heck are you into this implant?” I know you’re a big lover of it, but man, you’re putting those things [crosstalk 00:16:59].

Dr.Rothenberg: I’m telling you, if you don’t understand it, talk to [Steve 00:17:02]. Talk to Steve, because it’s a very different implant.

Shaun Keating: Yeah, you put it in with a mallet. You hit, you hammer in.

Dr.Rothenberg: Yeah, well, there’s another one that we found that is just like Bicon, the attachment is the same way. It’s not a screw, it’s a tap-in, but the implant is screwed in.

Shaun Keating: Okay, but tell me-

Dr.Rothenberg: And the patients seem to like that better. They don’t like us banging on their head.

Shaun Keating: Tell me how it works.

Dr.Rothenberg: If they’re medicated, it’s different, but if they’re not, they don’t … It doesn’t hurt, it’s just a really unpleasant thing.

Shaun Keating: Yeah, bam, bam, with a mallet [crosstalk 00:17:41].

Dr.Rothenberg: Yeah, you do it very gently now. We’ve learned to really do it gently, but it’s still kind of weird.

Shaun Keating: It’s kind of what I do with my screws into the-

Dr.Rothenberg: The other implant that I use is Quantum, and I use Bicon, and we do a lot of implants here. I was a general practice, then I became a general practice that did a lot of implants. And then in 2000 and … Last time I had cancer, let’s see, 2013, I … ’12, ’13, I changed the practice limited to implant dentistry.

Shaun Keating: No kidding, that’s awesome.

Dr.Rothenberg: Yeah, it’s been cool, it’s been really cool. I’ve had my medical challenges over the past few years. This getting old is not as easy as they say it is, but now I’m fine. I’m doing great, we’re working. I got a great team here. We seem to be seeing the cases that nobody else wants to do, the ones that are tough.

Shaun Keating: I know.

Dr.Rothenberg: And I enjoy that, when the easiest thing I do every day is sit down and do my surgery for the day.

Shaun Keating: Yeah, I know, you’re-

Dr.Rothenberg: [crosstalk 00:18:48]. I’ve been doing it a long time.

Shaun Keating: Yeah, you have, and you’re just crushing it, man. You really are.

Dr.Rothenberg: I’ll have my 50th dental school reunion coming up in 2021.

Shaun Keating: Ah, that’s so cool, dude. Man.

Dr.Rothenberg: I still can get on a surfboard or a tennis court.

Shaun Keating: That’s awesome. I can’t, I’ll drown.

Dr.Rothenberg: And my girlfriend’s 39 years old.

Shaun Keating: Say that again?

Dr.Rothenberg: Yeah, she really is.

Shaun Keating: Your grandchild, you said?

Dr.Rothenberg: No, my girlfriend.

Shaun Keating: Oh, your girlfriend.

Dr.Rothenberg: Yeah, she’s 39. She’s a fellow at Harvard.

Shaun Keating: Oh, you’re kidding.

Dr.Rothenberg: In research.

Shaun Keating: Beautiful.

Dr.Rothenberg: We met while I was teaching. It’s cool.

Shaun Keating: Good for you. So what about-

Dr.Rothenberg: I’m not going down the road of marriage anymore. It’s just nice to have somebody that you hang out with.

Shaun Keating: Oh, absolutely, man, definitely.
So tell me, what kind of procedures don’t you like doing at your practice?

Dr.Rothenberg: I don’t do any general dentistry anymore.

Shaun Keating: No kidding.

Dr.Rothenberg: I mean, occasionally, if I have a quadrant where I’m doing some implants and that crown in that area … Tooth needs a crown, I’ll do the crown. When I take the impression, I’ll pick up the crown and Steve will make a crown for the [inaudible 00:20:00] or something like that. But, my practice is totally, either the surgical part of the implants or the prosthetic part. Whether it’s one implant or an all on six, that’s just what we do.

Shaun Keating: That’s it, no, that’s awesome.
What are you doing for marketing to drive patients to your practice? How do you get patients in there?

Dr.Rothenberg: Well, we did the thing that everybody does, the AdWords, and the … Well, you’ve seen my website, it’s a pretty nice website. We spent a friggin’ fortune on it, and they become obsolete so fast. I don’t know, a couple of years ago, maybe even three years ago now, it thought to myself … I used to get the newspaper delivered to the house, the regular paper. [inaudible 00:20:47] “What if I put an ad in The Boston Globe?” I said “Well, that’s kind of cheesy, I don’t know.” I talked to my staff about it, and one gal who worked for me, [Terry 00:20:55], she still works for me part-time, she said to me “What have you got to lose? Why don’t you just try it and see what happens?”
Well, the first time or two we ran it, we ran The Sunday Globe in the front section, and it wasn’t as expensive as I thought it was gonna be, and Monday and Tuesday we must have got eight new patient phone calls that made appointments for consults.

Shaun Keating: No kidding. That’s awesome.

Dr.Rothenberg: And so we’ve been doing it every other week. I had a guy walk in yesterday, he said “I saw your ad two years ago, here.” And he went in his pocket, and he took out of his pocket the ad. He had cut it out of the paper.

Shaun Keating: Yeah, that happens, yeah, I-

Dr.Rothenberg: Who would figure the regular printed old-fashioned newspaper ad? And it just set off this chain and then once you start getting a lot of patients, those patients send more patients.

Shaun Keating: No kidding. Yeah, I’ve had doctor … “I seen your ad three years ago and I saved it and my lab guy retired and now Shaun, I’m gonna give you a shot.” People do that, they’ll see stuff and they’ll remember you and that’s why you gotta keep throwing it out there every once in a while just so when the time does come that they’re looking for a service or a doctor’s looking for a lab, it’s amazing how that is.

Dr.Rothenberg: You just have to be creative. We tried the AdWords and we’re a little bit on Facebook now. That’s been pretty interesting. I have a gal who’s a patient of ours and she did some stuff for us, put our visibility on Facebook better. It’s easy to track because the patients will say “Well, I saw your ad in The Globe,” or “I saw you on Facebook.” [inaudible 00:22:45] we’re very careful about that.

Shaun Keating: Yeah, absolutely. Do you have a-

Dr.Rothenberg: My front office people, they know about that, and they run one of these Excel spreadsheets so we can watch where things are going.

Shaun Keating: Perfect. Do you have a referral program at all with, you kind of go after your existing patients and have them … Let them-

Dr.Rothenberg: No. My existing patients are seeing a friend of mine who’s a general dentist over here in Swampscott, Darryl Smith. He runs a really nice practice, has a great hygiene program. So we’re sending out letters to all our old general dentistry patients, this is who we’re recommending. I just don’t do any of that anymore at all. If people call me on a Saturday night or something and they have a toothache and it needs a root canal, I don’t even have the stuff to do a root canal anymore.

Shaun Keating: That’s awesome. Hey, some people-

Dr.Rothenberg: So I give them North Shore Endo’s number, our root canal people, and I give them their number and they call them, but I don’t even have that stuff. I think we have a little composite for bonding, that’s about it.

Shaun Keating: No kidding, well, good for you.

Dr.Rothenberg: That’s all gone, it’s strange, it’s really strange, ’cause when you’re in a general dentistry practice, like I was, for years, I had patients that are with me 30, 40 years, you see them all the time, you get to know them. When you’re in a specialty practice you see the patients maybe four, five, six times and you’re done, you never see ’em again.

Shaun Keating: Yeah, exactly.

Dr.Rothenberg: It’s kind of weird.

Shaun Keating: Yeah. What about dental conventions or gatherings? What do you like to go to? Any in particular?

Dr.Rothenberg: It’s really important for me, I like to go to the meetings where I know the speakers are gonna be good speakers. Like going to the Yankee, nothing wrong with the Yankee but you get your CE credits there, there are some courses. Last year, I went to the Dental XP meeting, that group from Atlanta, the Salama brothers run it, and that was down in Florida, and I’m going down again in March. It’s a great meeting. The speakers are the best people in the world. It’s really worth going to. If I had to pick one meeting a year, that would be the meeting.

Shaun Keating: What are your thoughts on new technology in dentistry, like impression scanners, CAD/CAM, et cetera? What do you think about some of that?

Dr.Rothenberg: We routinely get CAT scans on patients, unless it’s one implant between two healthy teeth or something really simple. But, we get CAT scans and I call it CAT Scan guided. I don’t use surgical guides. I’ve been doing this too long. Surgical guides, I tried ’em, they’re really a pain. Some of the people like surgical guides. They’re usually the younger people. Everybody’s younger than me. The younger the people. But, to me it’s like “Okay, you’ve used it for a while, it’s time to take off the training wheels and go ahead and do what you need to do.”
But, that’s my feelings. Tor me, if it works for you and you do a good job with it, then keep on doing it the way you’re doing it.

Shaun Keating: There you go.

Dr.Rothenberg: We use CAT scans routinely. That’s really important, to know where I’m going. We haven’t got into digital scanning yet. And one of the reasons is, the system that we use, Bicon Quantum, with the abutments, I put in the abutments. Say a patient has four teeth that I’m gonna make crowns on for implants, well, I’ll put the abutments, which we have many different kinds, I’ll put the abutments in the implants but I won’t tap ’em in, and I’ll take the impression and withdraw them and the abutments are in the impression. And then I put the analogs on and I send them to Steve, and he pours up a model, and that model has the exact abutments that are gonna go in the patient’s mouth so he can prep them. He’s not working on a plastic dye, he’s working on the analog that’s going in the patient’s mouth.
And so that’s worked out wonderful for us. I just put that on Facebook in a group that I belong to. It’s worked out wonderful ’cause we get the case back from the lab, and my assistant takes the abutments out and runs them through the autoclave, cleans them and runs them through the autoclave, and then we put everything on, put the crowns on. The margins are perfect, ’cause they have to be. They’re going on [inaudible 00:27:20]. So it really works out really well.
I only think you could do it with Bicon. I don’t think you could do that with another kind of implant, but I’m not sure.

Shaun Keating: I don’t think so. It’s a one of a kind and a Steve tap there.

Dr.Rothenberg: The abutment is a solid titanium alloy. That’s why Steve can prep them any way he wants them, to get them below the gingiva. It’s really made our job a lot easier than working on those things that used to break off, and you had to superglue back on. That was awful. And then the fit we get when we take an x-ray, the fit we get is exquisite. It’s really worked out for us.

Shaun Keating: So, tell me, what kind of advice can you give some of our newer dentists starting off? You’ve been through it all, GP, a specialist.

Dr.Rothenberg: It’s tough. Some of these kids get out of school and they have two, $300,000 debt, starting off.

Shaun Keating: Yeah, at least, minimum.

Dr.Rothenberg: Yeah, that’s tough. That’s tough. I remember getting out of school, I don’t know exactly, I think I paid for about 10 years. I paid $86 a month for my student loans. $86 a month. And I wanted to just pay it off and my accountant said “Don’t pay it off, it’s like cheap money.” It was different. Every young guy or gal … I think about half the people who are in dental school now are women, and that’s great. I really think that there’s definitely place … Women make very good dentists.

Shaun Keating: Oh, I know, I’ve got a lot of great women dentists, man, and they just got the-

Dr.Rothenberg: One of my friends is a dentist in Germany. She’s an implantologist, and she’s one of the best in the world.

Shaun Keating: No kidding.

Dr.Rothenberg: She’ll be at this meeting in Florida, and Harriet Lerner, and she’s really just … If I have a case that I want to talk through with, we’d just get on. We have a group of people on Facebook from all over the world, and about every two or three weeks we’ll get together, try to get our times together and I’ll go on FaceTime on my iPhone, go on my computer. [Sam’s 00:29:27] from Moscow, [Tom Dewitz 00:29:30] from Belgium, he uses Bicon. [Howie Gluckman’s 00:29:33] from South Africa. [Augusto’s 00:29:34] from Brazil. A guy in Maryland, me, a bunch of other guys sometimes. A guy in India. And we just talk about our cases that are difficult or we’re having problems. We don’t talk about what worked out really well.
I’m not gonna learn anything from looking at a case that came out nice. I’m gonna learn something looking at a case that had a lot of problems. A young guy just getting out of school, unless you got somebody to back you up, like a dad who’s a dentist or something like that, it’s tough. You’re probably gonna be working somewhere for somebody. I got out of dental school, I was 24. At 25 I opened my own practice.

Shaun Keating: That is so young, man. At 25, I couldn’t even [crosstalk 00:30:20]-

Dr.Rothenberg: I didn’t know any better. I really didn’t know any better. I just did it. I thought you were supposed to do that. And it worked out. I don’t think you could do that now, because you can’t go into a bank and ask them for 100, $150,000 to start a practice, and that’s a minimum.

Shaun Keating: Yeah, exactly.

Dr.Rothenberg: On top of the loans you have already, so I don’t know how these young people do it, but they do it. They do it. There’s a lot of young people. I don’t know a lot of real young people. I know a lot of dentists in their 40s, so they’ve been practicing for a while, but I don’t know new graduates. I very rarely get involved with new graduate, ’cause they don’t get involved with implants. They gotta get through a crown first, and figure out how to do a crown.

Shaun Keating: It’s tough starting off. And for the dentists, they’re hesitant, I’m gonna teach this person all this stuff and then they’re going out and start their own practice or, you know, it’s just-

Dr.Rothenberg: Well, that’s what’s gonna happen. That’s why a lot of people go on and specialize, which is fine, or they go to areas of the country that really need a dentist. Like, when I opened my practice up here, it was in a small town north of Boston called Saugus, and the dental supply company found the site for you back then. They would find the location that needed a dentist. And, this town had five dentists die in the last, like, five years. They were old, they were old and they died and the town, maybe about 40, 50,000 people, only had one dentist.

Shaun Keating: Oh, man. It’s time to move in that place.

Dr.Rothenberg: And I was busy right away. I was lucky.

Shaun Keating: That’s awesome.
Well, dude man, I can’t thank you enough. I know you’re busy and you gotta get going, but I thank you for coming on and talking on the podcast with us this week. How’s everything else-

Dr.Rothenberg: Yeah, anybody wants to know more about the implants or you can give them my number, you know that.

Shaun Keating: Yeah, we’ll put your information up and your website and everything up on the podcast so people that see it, they can just click on the link there and check it out.

Dr.Rothenberg: That’s cool.

Shaun Keating: And we’ll put your Facebook up there and stuff like that.

Dr.Rothenberg: It’s always fun to help somebody out.

Shaun Keating: How, and [inaudible 00:32:43] you always been one of the most nicest dentists through all of the years. You’re such a cool dude, and I love your Bostonian, like take a [wok 00:32:51] in the [pok 00:32:48]. I love your accent and stuff. It’s just so neat. I just know you just got a real big heart, and I know how much you’re really into your dogs. You like the golden retrievers, don’t you? Is it golden retrievers or is it-

Dr.Rothenberg: Yup. I have a golden now. I have a really nice golden. She’s a little one, she’s only 64 pounds, and she was at the groomer this morning, and that dog is out cold now.

Shaun Keating: That’s so cool.

Dr.Rothenberg: She’s gonna sleep for about three, four hours. She went outside, did her business and just came back in and went to sleep.

Shaun Keating: Aw, that’s so [inaudible 00:33:27]. I love my dogs, too, man. I’m a big dog guy, myself, but hey, you gotta-

Dr.Rothenberg: Or else I’d be in this big house all alone. This house is 3,800 square feet. It’s a pretty big house for all alone. That’s why I can put the office here, ’cause it’s such a big house.

Shaun Keating: Oh, yeah, you know and that’s a goldmine, too. I have a doctor that just retired out of … He was in Nantucket, and he had his house and he did a dental practice with it, too. Obviously, Nantucket’s real pricey but he just retired and sold it. And the same thing with you. With what you can get out of that house and a dental practice for an up and coming younger dentist or an existent dentist that wants to buy a practice-

Dr.Rothenberg: I was married when I bought this house. It was $150,000 and now it’s about a million two.

Shaun Keating: Yeah, look at that.

Dr.Rothenberg: It was crazy. It’s crazy.

Shaun Keating: Yeah, it really is. That’s something else.

Dr.Rothenberg: But I’m not going anywhere, so it’s not worth anything except to me, because I’m not going anywhere. I like it here.

Shaun Keating: Well, baby, you keep sending those implants like you do every day and I want you to stay there, too. I’m just saying down the line you got yourself probably one five two, you never know with the practice, and everything else, but good things are coming your way and I can’t thank you enough. I love you, Dr. Rothenberg, God bless you and your family, and if there’s anything we could do, you know where to get us.

Dr.Rothenberg: You always do. You guys really go the extra mile. It’s so easy to talk to you. If we have a problem, we settle it out really easy. It’s not a big deal. The guys know that if they see something that they question in any way, like in the crown and bridge days, if they think it wasn’t a good impression or something like that, they’d call me up and say “I think you need to retake the impression.” And I’d retake it. I wouldn’t give them a big deal. I’d just retake it.

Shaun Keating: Yeah, that’s so awesome. I loved it. It’s a great attitude.

Dr.Rothenberg: You gotta think of your lab as like one of the people that’s working with you.

Shaun Keating: Exactly, we’re a team. We’re a team that both of us-

Dr.Rothenberg: Yeah, you got it. You can’t think of the lab, like it’s working against you. That doesn’t work for me anyway.

Shaun Keating: No. Well, dude, thank you so much, man. You’re the man, Dr. Rothenberg, and thanks again.

Dr.Rothenberg: Take care, have a nice afternoon.

Shaun Keating: All right, sir, good talking to you.

Dr.Rothenberg: Okay, take care.

Shaun Keating: All right, bye-bye.

Dr.Rothenberg: Bye-bye.

Host:Thanks for joining us on the Dental Up Podcast show this week. Make sure to follow us on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter, or search the Dental Up Podcast on iTunes for our weekly feed. Don’t forget to visit keatingdentallab.com/promo for exclusive offers. Keating Dental Lab is a full service dental laboratory, and we’re nationwide. We’d love for you to send us a case so we can show you the Keating difference. If you dig what you heard, please leave a review on iTunes, and we’ll be back next week.