Patient and team communication in the iPad era - a practical appraisal

Communication with the patient and within the team is a critical factor that can influence the treatment outcome, especially in complex and multidisciplinary dental treatments. Indeed, effective communication, not focused on marketing but on proper information of the patient's intraoral situation, can encourage greater acceptance of treatment and also greater treatment satisfaction. Better communication within the dental team is also a very important factor to improve the final result and reduce the time needed to reach it. Thanks to new technological devices widely available, such as tablets, we can use visual communication and interaction with the clinical images of the patient in order to improve communication with the patient, and especially within the dental team. The use of this method allows us to obtain a facial, dentolabial and dental esthetic analysis of the patient that can be used in various clinical steps, improving the predictability of the esthetic outcome and at the same time reducing the number of clinical sessions usually required.