This Articulating Foil Provides the Perfect Finishing Touch

When wrapping up a restorative case, clinicians are looking for a nice finishing touch to the procedure and to send the patient off feeling good about the appointment. If the articulating product step gets messy or time-consuming, both the patient and the provider can start to feel stressed out and possibly end the procedure feeling dissatisfied.

That’s why Ronni Brown, DDS, MPH, FADI, enjoys using TrollFoil from Directa Dental so much. The public health dentist, who practices in Santa Rosa, California, and lectures on evidence-based dentistry and substance-use disorders, is also asked to evaluate new dental products. When she gave

Ronni Brown, DDS, MPH, FADI

TrollFoil a test run last year as part of an evaluation, both she and her dental assistant were so impressed they needed to get their hands on more. The ease of use and the fact that forceps were no longer needed to place the foil in the patient’s mouth made them want to never go back to their previous articulating paper and its workflow.

Noting that the product category is “not super sexy,” Dr Brown was unsure just how much she could report about TrollFoil in the evaluation, or just how impressive the product could be. Although every dentist uses articulating products, she thought, “I don’t really know how much I’m going to be saying about articulating products.”

But after trying TrollFoil, she changed her tune. “I got the product, showed it to my dental assistant, and we immediately started saying to each other that we like this,” she says. “I [said], ‘Why don’t we just take our articulating forceps off the tray since we don’t need them?’ Now we have 1 less item on our tray.”

The next benefit came from its ease of use. “When we started using it, we loved the fact that it has [a] little plastic handle,” she says. “We can easily hold it and place it exactly where we want it.”

However, Dr Brown said that the biggest bonus is how using TrollFoil gives her confidence in knowing the results will be great and that patients have a functional and comfortable restoration. “Checking the patient’s occlusion is the last thing you do before the patient leaves, and it’s usually a time of stress, because I have another patient waiting for me,” she says. “Now I’ve got, let’s say, multiple contact areas that I have to adjust. It’s the end of the appointment, and there may be some pressure to be done in a certain time.”

With previous articulating products, Dr Brown would need to use forceps that might not always bind the articulating product, making it difficult to place properly or even causing it to tear as the patient goes into lateral movements. “Now you’re under time pressure and you’re frustrated,” she says. “But I feel that TrollFoil has allowed me to end each appointment without professional frustration.”

TrollFoil can be used under a wide variety of clinical situations, including wet or dry teeth, limited opening, limited vestibular space, gaggers, and metal and nonmetallic restorations. Clinicians can verify occlusal contacts for both arches from 1 tooth to an entire quadrant using the mini or the original quadrant size.

The double-sided foil comes in original 8 microns thick or the new TrollFoil at 4.5 micron thick. TrollFoil has no problem marking on wet, dry or highly polished surfaces such as cast gold or porcelain. It is mounted in its own frame, so no forceps are needed.

“I can hold it and I’m not dealing with articulating paper that’s pulling away or tearing. It [also] doesn’t smudge, so I’m not left with gloves that are blue or red,” Dr Brown says. “It wipes off the restoration really easily, so my patients get to walk out of the clinic with fillings that are not colored.”

The clinical results also are superb. The thin foil delivers precise marks that produce a clean guide as to where adjustments to the restoration are needed. “It’s really easy to use, has streamlined the workflow, and decreased the number of instruments on my tray. It’s just a nice product,” says Dr Brown, who quickly requested more TrollFoil as soon as she had used her evaluation samples up.

“I don’t think I’ve ever done that for any product before. Again, it’s a general use item in any dental practice, regardless of whether you’re the oral surgeon, the endodontist, the prosthodontist, [or] a general dentist. We all use articulating products. But I really love this product.”

TrollFoil’s mounted frame design eliminates the need for forceps and the need for the clinician to handle the articulating paper directly. An added bonus is that the patient can’t inadvertently bite down on forceps or on the operator’s fingers.

“With this, I’m not trying to position something in the beaks of an instrument. Instead, I pick up Troll Foil with my fingers on the handle and position it in the patient’s mouth,” she says. “When you’re [using] the articulating forceps, I always worry the patient might bite down on the metal forceps or bite my finger. With TrollFoil, the handle is wide enough that you could hold it comfortably with your fingers without worrying that the patient’s going to bite your finger.”

The days of reaching for the forceps and using traditional articulating papers are in the past for Dr Brown. “I have absolutely no desire to go back,” she says. “It’s also great that it’s individually packaged, and 1 TrollFoil is all we need for 1 appointment. It is one of those items that we may not be super excited about but is so incredibly necessary, and gives me the confidence that the patient’s occlusion is correct.”

* Free samples available online

Available in th following options:

TrollFoil 4.5 Microns blue 80/box

TrollFoil 8 Microns blue or red 500/bx or 100/bx