Hopkins Dental Health

Hopkins Dental Health At Hopkins Dental Health, it is our goal to provide high quality cosmetic, implant and family dental care.

09/03/2026

Ep 2 Rebranding - Elevating the Brand to Match the Dentistry

With the new practice, I knew I wanted a revived look and feel that matched the level of work my team would be doing. Huge thanks to the J29 Creative Group team and their work on the branding.

Full mouth aesthetic rehabilitation. Poor occlusion finally started to catch up in this case. Over the last 12 months di...
09/03/2026

Full mouth aesthetic rehabilitation.

Poor occlusion finally started to catch up in this case. Over the last 12 months discomfort and fractured teeth created some urgency before things truly unraveled.

Records were taken with plans to correct cross-bite and alignment, increase vertical dimension (open the bite), and idealize occlusion.

A little show through on #9, but other than that I’m extremely happy with this case, especially after today’s final equilibration.

Any dentists that want to learn this workflow, stay tuned. Have some really exciting news to share soon!!

08/07/2026

Ep 1 Building the Practice - Planning with Intention

Demo Footage of me swinging a hammer around soon to come. 🔨

Let’s go over a case!Our aesthetic dilemas in this case are as follows:1) Incorrect dominance of anterior teeth. This pa...
08/05/2026

Let’s go over a case!

Our aesthetic dilemas in this case are as follows:
1) Incorrect dominance of anterior teeth. This patients lateral incisors are incorrectly the most prominent teeth in her smile.
2) Deficient lip mobility. The result of this is that the patients teeth remain hidden when she smiles or speaks.
3) Incorrect alignment of anterior teeth. The patients front teeth are slightly rotated and the long axis of each tooth is pointing in a different direction.
4) Incorrect positioning of the patients incisal edges. The patients front teeth are straight across instead of complimenting the patients lower lip line.
5) Deficient volume of posterior teeth. The patients back teeth almost disappear after her canines.

Our goals for this case:
1) Regain central dominance of anterior teeth.
2) Improve facial volume of teeth to allow appropriate lip mobility.
3) Idealized alignment of anterior teeth.
4) Harmonize incisal edges with the patients smile line.
5) Add facial volume to posterior teeth to improve dark buccal corridors.
6) Achieve “brilliance” with ceramic shade and translucency.
7) Accomplish all of this by removing as little tooth structure as possible.

All records and design goals were sent to my ceramist Bob Clark, CDT, LVIM to design the case. Minimal preparation was achieved allowing ceramics to have a defined seat and bonded entirely in enamel. And, as with all of my cases, a final equilibration was completed to idealize occlusion.

This smile is no longer hidden, and quite brilliant in my opinion!

Kearney25This year marks year 25 of the Kearney Trip. You read that right. 25 YEARS. A quarter century. Every year. Neve...
07/26/2026

Kearney25

This year marks year 25 of the Kearney Trip. You read that right. 25 YEARS. A quarter century. Every year. Never missed.

What started as a summer kayaking trip in college has become a lock-it-in annual getaway.

We are “the boys working on the bridge.” We are “a good unit”. We “let our light shine”. We hold home run derby’s in the Vail Brewing Co parking lot. We turn empty bar stages in to open mic nights. We take 2 hour train rides just to play wiffle ball on a custom field. We’re the guys a bar owner will open up 3 hours early so we can watch the KState game. We hold a trip in the middle a hurricane. We aren’t afraid to drink in a bar with a “more than a couple mannequins”.

And we easily have another 25 years left in us.

I’m not sure how, or why, the idea of capturing a bite in “centric relation” (CR) became such a hurdle to dentists, espe...
06/16/2026

I’m not sure how, or why, the idea of capturing a bite in “centric relation” (CR) became such a hurdle to dentists, especially younger ones. Hurdle may actually be putting it lightly. For the first 10 years of my career I was straight up afraid of this concept.

Afraid I couldn’t accurately capture it

Afraid if I couldn’t capture it that my dentistry would fail

Afraid I’d be stuck doing single-tooth dentistry my whole career without mastering this concept

To make matters worse, did you know that there are more 20 different definitions in dentistry of what “centric relation” is??? No wonder we’re lost!

And when do we need to record this location? What are we wanting to accomplish for the patient when we are determining the patients centric relation, or fully seated condylar position, or most anterior-superior condylar position, or muscle-neutral bite position (which is what I refer to it as)🤦‍♂️🤦‍♂️🤦‍♂️ ??? It’s when we’re re-establishing a patients bite, right? Maybe the patient has blown through their occlusion due to bruxism. Maybe the enamel is gone due to chemical erosion. Or maybe the patient has lost teeth and we’re replacing the bite with implants or dentures. We want a stable and repeatable bite position to build occlusion towards.

The point is, I don’t want you to overthink when you need to acquire your CR bite. And when you do need to capture it, let the patients muscles help guide you in to the correct position. This is the concept of deprogramming a patient.

We eliminate inflammation

We eliminate habitual bite posturing

We let the elevator muscles do their job and seat the condyles

There are several anterior-only devices that work well for this. I use a Kois Deprogrammer b/c it’s easy to design and print, patients tolerate wearing it well, and I can have the patient while I’m capturing the deprogrammed bite (which is not the case for devises like quick splints).

2 weeks of nighttime where and you can finally trust your bite record.

Most full mouth rehabilitations don’t fail because of the ceramics.They fail because the FOUNDATION and the FORCES weren...
06/05/2026

Most full mouth rehabilitations don’t fail because of the ceramics.

They fail because the FOUNDATION and the FORCES weren’t fully understood first.

Before we ever prep a tooth, we have to answer critical questions:

• Why did the teeth fail?
• Is the joint healthy?
• Is the patient stable?
• Is airway contributing to bruxism?
• Are the muscles functioning normally?
• What forces will the restoration have to survive?

That’s why Step 1 of the Ten:Ten Sequence is:
EVALUATION.

Because long-term success depends on the balance of stability and aesthetics.

Here I break down the 5 components of evaluation I use before every comprehensive rehabilitation case:
→ Dental Analysis
→ Airway Assessment
→ Muscle Activity
→ Joint Condition
→ Medical History

The best rehabilitations begin with an accurate assessment.

Stay tuned for Step 2 of the Ten:Ten Sequence:
Deprogramming + capturing an ideal CR bite.

FMR the old fashioned way. Made with bourbon, bitters, pure cane sugar, 6 new posterior restoration (crowns and onlays),...
05/27/2026

FMR the old fashioned way. Made with bourbon, bitters, pure cane sugar, 6 new posterior restoration (crowns and onlays), 4 anterior veneers, some lower composites, garnished with a full mouth bite equilibration.

Anterior ceramics competes by

🥃 🦷 😁

This past week I was reminded of a previous post of mine where I walked through my method of equilibration, particularly...
05/24/2026

This past week I was reminded of a previous post of mine where I walked through my method of equilibration, particularly following comprehensive dentistry. This case specifically was final equilibration after a complete smile makeover. Ceramics were completed by

Equilibration has become somewhat of a passion of mine. What I love about it is that it’s the one aspect of dentistry that a patient can truly FEEL.

In fact one of the things I tell everyone during consults is that if you choose to have me complete your case, your bite will be DIALED IN. And I just can’t promise that will be the case with another provider.

I hope this post can help other dentists refine this process for cases.

This week I was reminded of a previous post of mine where I went through my equilibration process, particularly after co...
05/24/2026

This week I was reminded of a previous post of mine where I went through my equilibration process, particularly after completing comprehensive cases. This specific case is a full mouth cosmetic makeover I completed a couple months back.

Equilibration has become a bit of a passion of mine. I think that’s b/c once it’s completed ideally, it’s the one part of dentistry that the patient can FEEL is perfect.

It’s the aspect of cosmetic and restorative dentistry that I tell patients during their consultations that I will absolutely nail for them, and I can’t honestly promise another dentist will do the same.

I hope this post helps other dentists learn to refine this process.

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460 Nichols Road, Ste. 375
Kansas City, MO
64112

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Monday 7am - 4pm
Tuesday 7am - 4pm
Wednesday 7am - 4pm
Thursday 7am - 4pm

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