BOC Winners in Practice: Vista Apex's PinkWave Curing Light

Dr. Chad Duplantis of Fossil Creek Dental Partners in Fort Worth, Texas explains why he found the PinkWave curing light from Vista Apex so unique.

Dr. Chad Duplantis

DPR: Tell us a bit about yourself and your practice.

Dr. Duplantis: I practice in Fort Worth, Texas, and I've been here for the past 20 years. I incorporate a lot of digital technology into our practice—that's kind of what I hang my hat on. We do mainly restorative and aesthetic dentistry. We like to create a great experience for the patient in our practice.

I was just blown away when I first got it. It was just so unique and so different. There's a lot of discussion in dentistry right now about the wavelength of lights. But this light, from what I read about it, it really fired on all cylinders. I was very intrigued that the light is actually pink in nature, whereas most curing lights are blue.

DPR: What has it been like using the PinkWave in your practice?

Dr. Duplantis: There were 3 things that really caught my eye. Number 1 was the pink light. Number 2 is the broad spectrum of the wavelength. And number 3 is that I’ve been intrigued by the fact that it didn't emit as much heat. Nowadays, there are a lot of lights out there that if the patient's not anesthetized, they're like, ‘Wow, this is getting hot.’  And I will tell you that I have used it for everything. I've been treating direct restorations, indirect restorations, sealants, so on and so forth. It has been my go-to curing light and I've actually been very enamored with it since we received it.

Also, it's a good size so it fits in your hand very nicely and it really is very lightweight, which is very nice for both the assistant and for myself. Sometimes incorporating all this technology and putting it in a robust device that's going to withstand the rigors of a dental practice, it ends up being heavy. I noticed right away that this was a very lightweight curing light.

DPR: How has using the PinkWave benefited your practice?

Dr. Duplantis: I was blown away by this—this light has a built-in transilluminator and transillumination has become really huge in dentistry. So if you want to transilluminate a tooth to help diagnose certain conditions, such as cracks or if you're looking for canal orifices, or trying to detect interproximal caries, the transillumination feature is a great benefit.

With everything that I've read in the research that the broader spectrums do provide a real efficient cure of the materials. So, I feel confident that with a broad spectrum curing light that I'm getting a full cure. One of the biggest problems with composite resins in general over the past several years has been polymerization shrinkage. The studies that I was shown proved to me that PinkWave lowers polymerization, even with low shrinkage resin.