Westchester Oral & Maxillofacial Surgery & Implantology - A…

School’s Back!

Tap Into the Back-to-School Season

As you load up the family for some final summertime adventures, preparing for the upcoming school year is likely one of the last things on your mind. Instead of shopping for school supplies, your main focus might be finding the best place to position your lawn chair around the campfire for optimal marshmallow roasting! But the back-to-school season is coming up, and families need to begin the expensive task of purchasing items for school. According to the National Retail Foundation, back-to-school shopping contributes to 17% of total annual sales. That’s a nearly $76 billion industry that your business could be cashing in on.

tapping into the full capacity of the market. You need to make the offer something people actually want or need, be it chiropractic adjustments for kids carrying too many books or discounts on vehicle services for carpooling families. For example, if you sell and service computers, you must do more than offer 10% off all technology services for the back-to-school season. Provide a sale on installing and updating programs for students or provide a gift with the purchase of a laptop for college students on the go. This makes your offer more appealing to your customer base, which will guarantee you happy and returning customers.

teachers. Thousands of dedicated teachers across the U.S. have a classroom budget, and some must dip into their bank accounts to keep their classrooms stocked. Offering “thank-you” discounts and sales for teachers will bring more business through your door and help you support your community. Teachers can also serve as a direct marketing tool for your business. Whether it’s via mailers or in-person during open house nights, August is full of teacher-to-parent communication that could include coupons or recommendations to your business. The back-to-school season isn’t just for the big- box stores or retail providers. You can tap into this powerful market and make this last summer stretch a lucrative business season. The innovations continued in 1891 with German dentist Otto Walkhoff, who began using camphorated chlorophenols to sterilize root canals, then picked up speed in 1908 with the introduction of new techniques to measure the root canal. Almost in tandem, Dr. Meyer L. Rhein came up with a newway to determine canal length and level of obturation, and G.V. Black proposed a method to prevent overfilling by determining out canal length and apical foramen size. When infection theories were settled in the late 1940s and dentists finally agreed that not all infected teeth need to be removed to prevent systemic disease, the modern root canal was truly born. It has been well-received over the decades, with success rates reported from 86% to over 95%. Today, new alternative procedures like GentleWave, which uses fluid dynamics to clean out the root canal, are just starting to gain traction. Clearly, this is an area of dentistry to watch.

However, when you only offer a special or sale because of a particular season, you are not

There’s also a key demographic in the back- to-school market that often gets forgotten:

THE HISTORY OF THE ROOT CANAL

FromWatch Springs to Waves

T he origin story of the root canal — remember from dental school. That’s because the first root canal instrument wasn’t a carefully designed, brand-new tool but something a lot more ad hoc: a filed-down watch spring. The innovation was the brainchild of a Washington, D.C. dentist named Edwin Maynard. Faced with an infected tooth, Maynard created the first precursor to the modern root canal when he filed down a watch spring and attached it to his drill in order to sand down the cap of the tooth. The modification allowed him to safely access the infected pulp within, facilitating the removal of nerve tissue, blood vessels, and cellular entities; the reshaping of the canal; and the filling process. But Maynard isn’t the only one who deserves credit for the root canal procedure we perform today. Other creative dentists specifically the root canal file — might be one of those things you’ll always

followed his example. In “A Brief History of Endodontics,” Dr. Arnaldo Castellucci writes that in 1847, dentist Edwin Truman pioneered the use of gutta-percha, the rubbery thermoplastic still used today as a filling material. In 1867, G.A. Bowman was the first to use gutta-percha cones as “the sole material for obturating root canals,” and in 1885, Lepkowski began using formalin instead of arsenic to fix pulp stumps.

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