Very Dental: Dr. Taras Konanec on Bringing Modern Restorative Techniques to Dental School

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[00:02:04] [SPEAKER_01] Welcome to the Very Dental Podcast, where you'll find entertaining and relevant conversations with visionaries, clinicians, and your friends in the dental space. Now, here's your host, Dr. Alan Mead. Where the 2026 BioClear Summit is taking place. It's been good. It's been really good. I recorded a live podcast yesterday, and I'm hoping my personal recording of it failed miserably, but apparently it is recorded. So I don't know exactly when it's going to come out, but supposedly we have that.

[00:02:34] [SPEAKER_01] Joining me, a new friend of mine, Taras Kananik. How'd I do? Did I get it okay? You got it. All right. Taras was introduced to me by Artie Volker, who everyone kind of... Everyone knows Artie. That's really and truly like Artie has connected me with a lot of people on this podcast, and so Taras is no exception. Welcome to the show. Thank you. Thank you, Alan. So we just figured out earlier today we're both 1997 graduates, which is funny. It makes us kind of old, doesn't it? Yeah.

[00:03:03] [SPEAKER_02] Yeah. Definitely great. Yeah.

[00:03:05] [SPEAKER_01] Yeah, for sure. But like... Okay, so like many of us in Gen X, we've seen a lot of stuff. You know, we've seen... We lived in a time before the internet was ubiquitous. We lived in a time, you know, long before... I don't know. You're from Canada, right? That's right. Montreal. Montreal. Okay. So I... And that's where you were born and raised? Yes. Okay. So, you know, you and I have experienced a wide range of technologies changing, including in dentistry.

[00:03:34] [SPEAKER_01] So you graduated from McGill in 1997. Is that right? That's right. Okay. Tell us... What is your current position at McGill? You are faculty there.

[00:03:44] [SPEAKER_02] That's right. I've been teaching in the operative program pretty much two years since graduation. Okay. So one of my old profs said, hey, Tarasio, why don't you just jump on board with us and come on in and teach, you know, some of the tricks that you've learned so far. Okay. And became a faculty lecturer. Okay. And then he had some COVID reflection. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And he ended up saying, I'm out of here. And he said, Taras Kananik, the program's all yours.

[00:04:12] [SPEAKER_02] So I was given the preclinical operative program to be in charge of the second year. So I went from doing two lectures to doing about 30 lectures. Yeah, yeah. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. And then recently became the director of the operative program for the faculty.

[00:04:26] [SPEAKER_01] Okay. Okay. So you do preclinic. You're also probably in the clinic and you're teaching lecture didactic. So you're the whole nine yards.

[00:04:34] [SPEAKER_02] Yeah. Trying to kind of take care of the student experience, you know, from preclinic. I was always curious what happens to a dental student after they leave preclinic or the ideal world of preclinic. Yeah. What is happening when they're getting into clinic?

[00:04:47] [SPEAKER_00] Yeah.

[00:04:47] [SPEAKER_02] And I've seen that now. And one of the most difficult things that for any dental school is instructor uniformity. Yeah. Oh, my gosh. You know, trying to get consensus as to what is being taught in the clinic because a lot of the clinicians and thank God we've got them because most people, at least in Canada, are coming in and volunteering. Sure. You know, they're not getting paid at all. And there's a point where we weren't even getting parking paid, you know?

[00:05:14] [SPEAKER_00] That's classic. That's so funny.

[00:05:17] [SPEAKER_02] Yeah. But, you know, without these people, the student experience wouldn't be the same. But we do want to be teaching everything the same. Oh, my gosh. Not what this guy's doing in his office and the other's doing in his office.

[00:05:28] [SPEAKER_01] Well, that was the classic example. Like, if you had an operative... So, I went to the University of Minnesota. And I have to tell you that mid-90s University of Minnesota, it was, as a student, it was a fair amount of trauma I came out with from dental school. It sounds like it wasn't that traumatic for you. You went back to teach there and you're running the place now. So, you must have had a pretty good experience. Is that right?

[00:05:49] [SPEAKER_02] We had a good experience. Okay. But there was a few instructors that definitely, you know, gave us a hard time.

[00:05:54] [SPEAKER_01] Yeah. I mean, I had a lot of stuff going on there. But what's interesting about it is that it felt like no one in the faculty was particularly concerned with the student experience. You know, it was more about their own little thing. And it sounds like to hear you say you're worried about the student experience is kind of refreshing, to be perfectly honest. And I'm not... I have no trouble throwing my old University of Minnesota stuff under the bus.

[00:06:21] [SPEAKER_01] That said, I know some people there that have tried to make these changes. So, I think that's one of the things where, you know, from where we were to what it is now, they've tried to change that.

[00:06:30] [SPEAKER_00] Yeah.

[00:06:31] [SPEAKER_01] I am curious. And your point, my point being though, it's like if you went in the operative clinic and you were scheduled with one faculty and you saw an operatory in one of the other rows that was with a different... You might try it. Yeah. You know, like the reality is you knew what you were going to get in a lot of cases with certain faculty. So, like the... That's a real thing when you've got, you know, some faculty preferred because they are more laid back or that they would prefer to...

[00:06:57] [SPEAKER_01] We had one guy, we were not doing any posterior composites at all unless you worked with Dr. Zidane. And if you worked with Dr. Zidane and you had operative in his row, you were doing composite, which was kind of cool at the time, pretty cool. But it's also like the point's very well taken. The consistency wasn't there. What's the challenge been for you? How have you handled that?

[00:07:17] [SPEAKER_02] Well, this is it. We're hoping... We're trying to keep the students with their instructor. Okay. So, not to have student jumping from instructor to instructor. Okay. And making sure that the instructors don't accept any other students in the clinic.

[00:07:28] [SPEAKER_00] Okay.

[00:07:29] [SPEAKER_02] And communication. You know, what I'm trying to do is have people talk and try to get that uniformity so that we are giving the students the same message and the same experience. Yeah. Now, that's not going to be possible probably ever. But I think through communication and getting meeting consensus meetings. Yeah. So, we just came out of a consensus meeting. And I think I'm positive that it's going to be a step forward. Yeah. You know? And talking. Talking. I think that's the best way to go.

[00:07:57] [SPEAKER_01] It's hard, too, because like you said, you know, you've got to... Do you have... How consistent is the faculty? In other words, they're like... If I've... With us, man, it was a complete random chance. You know, you took the appointment when you could get it. And now I'm hearing in a lot of cases they have more like... They're almost like, you know, there's individual group practices throughout the dentistry. So, you're working with more consistency with working with certain people. Is that how you're trying to do it?

[00:08:27] [SPEAKER_02] You're not going to be able to do anything with that particular instructor. But you have to stay with the group. So, the thought is, it's like a general private practice. Yes. Is you should be able to be taught everything by that instructor. Yeah. Now, for certain, we have certain endo specialists that are going to come along. And we do have an endo clinic. Yeah. We do have a prosto clinic. But for the most part, we're multidisciplinary and trying to emulate kind of what's happening in clinical practice. Yeah. Yeah.

[00:08:54] [SPEAKER_01] That's actually really smart. I don't think we had a ton of... I mean, again, 1997. I don't think we had a ton of that kind of a presentation. Did you... When you were in school, did you have these interdisciplinary clinics or was it...

[00:09:06] [SPEAKER_02] Yeah. It was all pretty much... Luck of the draw. Luck of the draw. And it was isolated to, okay, today we're going to be doing operative. Yeah. And then we're going to be doing endo.

[00:09:14] [SPEAKER_01] Yeah. Yeah. What makes me laugh too is remember you'd have... Oh, you'd have operative. And literally, you had a three-hour appointment and you had like a DO amalgam you were supposed to do and somehow you almost didn't get it done.

[00:09:25] [SPEAKER_02] Yeah. I remember that vividly. I'm like, this is crazy. This is it. Do you remember your first filling? I think everybody... Oh, God, I do. Yeah.

[00:09:31] [SPEAKER_01] First time giving anesthesia too. Yeah. Oh, my gosh.

[00:09:34] [SPEAKER_02] Yeah. Yeah. I remember that. And it took me three hours. It was... Yeah. I think it was DO on 27 and it was an amalgam. Yeah. And it took me three hours to finish it.

[00:09:42] [SPEAKER_00] Yeah.

[00:09:42] [SPEAKER_02] But you got to just jump in, right? Yeah. That's great. Yeah.

[00:09:46] [SPEAKER_01] And a well-trained faculty that has a little bit... I mean, has an understanding of the best ways of teaching but also has a heart a little bit to understand how scared and how... Yeah. I don't know that the instructor... I don't remember who the instructor was that I worked with my first time, but they certainly didn't know how afraid I was. I don't know if they knew it was my first time seeing a patient. Right. I don't know if they did. I remember my first patient... God, it was great. This is sort of... I've told this story, I think, on the podcast, but he came in. I don't even know what...

[00:10:15] [SPEAKER_01] I think he needed some simple operative and he was an old, old hunched over guy. He was as German as they came. He could barely... He could barely move the poor guy and all he would talk about is, oh, osteoporosis is killing me. You know, it's in Minnesota. It's a sweet guy and I never... Like, I think the operative went well, but he had a miserable appointment because he was just really struggling. So I had to see him again six months later. You know what?

[00:10:42] [SPEAKER_01] I found a pillow for his neck and he never... It was the best appointment he ever had. And it's like... That is like a perfect analogy of what experience does for you. You know, like the reality is I made this guy's experience better just because I knew better. Like someone said, oh, geez, they got pillows here. You're going to... I just didn't know. And so on some level, it's hard to impart that in a two-year clinical experience for a dental student. And that's like kind of what your job is.

[00:11:08] [SPEAKER_01] It's like you got to get them up to speed in the most uniform way, but in the most comfortable way for them. It's a big task. It is.

[00:11:16] [SPEAKER_02] And taking baby steps is the way to go. Oh, yeah. Yeah. And I've created a checklist kind of thing so that students can follow and check in at certain points so that they don't get overwhelmed. Yeah. You know, especially with composite, we know that now more than anything, one of the most difficult things we do is... Yeah, it really is. It really is. A composite resident to make it last 20 years, there's probably a hundred steps that have to go really, really perfectly to make this last. Yeah. And in a dental school setting, like you say, the students are just doing this their first time.

[00:11:44] [SPEAKER_02] So, you know, helping them to get these checkpoints helps with the teaching.

[00:11:49] [SPEAKER_01] Yeah. So, this is the point in the interview where I mentioned the fact that McGill is maybe the first school that started using the BioClear method. Is that right? One of the first.

[00:11:59] [SPEAKER_02] One of the first in Canada, I would say. What we did is when I went to the BioClear Learning Center, I was just flabbergasted. How long ago? When did you start? Probably about 12 years ago. Yeah. Yeah. And when I... Where did you hear of it? So, I saw David Clark in hotel courses. This was the classic way that I learned BioClear. Yeah. Just one day at a time. David Clark was traveling everywhere. He was. He was an animal. Yeah.

[00:12:26] [SPEAKER_01] He's in all the throwaway journals, all the everything. He was everywhere. Yeah.

[00:12:30] [SPEAKER_02] So, he would come in for a hotel course and I would go to every one. And, you know, he talked about so many things that I connected with in terms of minimally invasive dentistry and additive only and, you know, pericervical dentin preservation. Yeah. And I just connected with all this stuff. And I said, I gotta learn more. Yeah. Went to the Learning Center. Yeah. The day of the Learning Center, my first day, I remember calling the head of my department at that point. It was Sam. And I said, Sam, we gotta be teaching this stuff. Yeah.

[00:12:59] [SPEAKER_02] We gotta be teaching this stuff. Yeah. Because it's a tragedy if the students are graduating not even knowing. Yeah. How we can be conservative. Yeah. And not to cut teeth. Yeah. So, that was kind of my mission.

[00:13:11] [SPEAKER_01] Which is funny for an operative guy to be saying. Yeah. But, I mean, it's real. It's like the whole idea is it's like once you've seen it, it's hard to unsee. Absolutely. Absolutely.

[00:13:20] [SPEAKER_02] And the students just go wild. You know, when we do our BioClear Learning Days, it is just such a fun day for the students. Okay. Because they get to handle warm composite. Yeah. Which they have not the whole semester up until then. Yeah. So, warming composite. But also an anatomic matrix. Yeah. You know, which is just all these revelations.

[00:13:40] [SPEAKER_00] Yeah. Yeah.

[00:13:41] [SPEAKER_02] And they love it and they just want to keep doing it.

[00:13:44] [SPEAKER_01] Yeah. Yeah.

[00:13:45] [SPEAKER_02] So, okay.

[00:13:46] [SPEAKER_01] So, let's say, I don't know exactly when the clinical stuff starts for you, but like- Third year. Third year. Okay. So, a junior comes in. Like, I asked you this before and it's hard to not, you gotta be gingerly. It's not, you're not teaching all BioClear. You're teaching lots of different stuff. Yeah. How are they able to actually use, like, once they know it, they're allowed to use it whenever they want to or do you have to set it up for certain days?

[00:14:10] [SPEAKER_02] So, for BioClear, what we're doing is once a student leaves pre-clinic, they can do it in clinic, but we have to have an instructor that is able to supervise them. So, that's where we're kind of stuck right now or the bottleneck is having enough instructors that are trained or officially certified to be able to get a student to it properly. Yeah. Because there's certain ways to use a BioClear matrix that you have to know. Yeah. And there's a few certain errors that you really don't want to make with BioClear. Yeah.

[00:14:38] [SPEAKER_02] So, if we have those instructors, we can teach them. And what I like to say is, you know, third year, you're allowed to do a black triangle. Fourth year, you can do diastemas because of the complexity factor of diastema closure and reestablishing the contact. Yep. That's how we're kind of proceeding in the university. Just giving it in kind of different levels of difficulty.

[00:15:00] [SPEAKER_01] What's funny about it too is like when you were at the Learning Center, the Learning Center, I mean, I've talked about this on the show, but there's lecture, but then you go down to David's clinic and you actually do this stuff. And so, having had a lot of experience as a dentist, you go in there and stuff really clicks pretty quickly. I always wonder, like, but with less experience, do they catch on quick? They catch on really quick. That's interesting.

[00:15:25] [SPEAKER_02] Okay. They catch on really quick. And I think, Alan, what it is partly as dentists, we have to unlearn things. Yeah. We do. We absolutely do. Yeah. Right? But the students haven't learned. They haven't learned much of it. So, there's nothing much to undo. That's actually a really good point. Yeah. It's a really good point. And they get it and the light bulb turns on and I like to kind of tell the story of the class two composite and saying, well, you know, a week prior, they're going to be doing layering composite, very traditional, you know, oblique layering. Yep.

[00:15:55] [SPEAKER_02] And then the week later after that, we're doing BioClear. And I tell them, guys, we have one luxury in preclinic. We can unscrew our teeth. Yeah. And we can see our interproximal. Something that after this year, you'll never be able to unscrew your tooth and see the interproximal. Yeah. And it's such a revelation for you as a dentist to be able to see your interproximal and what's actually going on in there. So, the student week prior is layering, week after is BioClear. You look at these two interproximals and it's a world of difference. Sure it is.

[00:16:22] [SPEAKER_02] You've got a BioClear, a Mylar finish versus all of these kind of, inevitably you have layers of where the increments are coming together in traditional. Yeah. And we as dentists don't see that, right? And what do you see in a radiograph is probably, you know, 10 or 20% of what's the real picture. Sure.

[00:16:43] [SPEAKER_01] No, that's exactly right. So, interestingly, I don't know if you have any stats on this. I don't know if they have any. Like, what, I wonder if BioClear has had a, like, bigger penetration in the Canadian market because-

[00:16:55] [SPEAKER_02] Well, certainly David always says that in per capita in Canada, there are more dentists doing BioClear.

[00:17:00] [SPEAKER_01] Yeah. Yeah. That's what I wondered. I mean, like, because exposure in dental school is a, I mean, I was talking to the scope guys earlier. Like, here's the thing, you know, if you're an endodontist and you go through a residency, you're going to buy the microscope that they had in residency because that's what you know. You know, it's a story. And I'm just like, if you know, if this is what you've learned, this is what you'll do. I mean, I would argue that I don't do a ton of stuff the same way that I did in dental school, but like I said, you know, you and I, our age, so much has changed.

[00:17:27] [SPEAKER_01] And, you know, since what they were, you know, were they teaching posterior composites to you in 1997? We were doing a few in clinic. We, I mean, only if you had the right guy. I don't even think I ever did one in pre-clinic. I just, I just think that we just did straight up amalgam and we cast our own goal, but that was, that was pretty much it. Yeah. So coming out and realizing people wanted white back teeth, you know, was new to me.

[00:17:49] [SPEAKER_02] And that's really changed right now because all the students and we see it now, there's hardly any patients that will accept amalgam in the, in the student clinic. So what I tell my students is you absolutely have to be a good bondodontist. You have to understand adhesion backwards and forwards because this is your future. And especially if you want to be minimally invasive. Yeah. So this is the way we are trying to go at McGill is to try to teach methods that are minimally invasive. Yeah. And BioClear is one of them.

[00:18:19] [SPEAKER_00] Yeah.

[00:18:19] [SPEAKER_01] What's interesting is like, okay, I'm hearing you and I'm like, this is kind of, you have to walk a tightrope a little bit because the reality is you still have to teach them. Yeah. You have to teach them everything. It's, I mean. Four years is not enough. It's kind of not enough. I agree. But more than that, like, also I can tell that you, I mean, if, if you were having your tooth work done, you'd want a BioClear restoration. You'd want, you'd want someone who really has a minimally invasive philosophy. For sure. But you kind of have to teach everything. Yeah. And I can tell you lean towards that. So it's like, oh, what's, what's the, how do you handle that?

[00:18:47] [SPEAKER_01] Is that something you've probably had to struggle with?

[00:18:49] [SPEAKER_02] Well, I know I'm trying to teach the stuff that I'm really passionate about, you know, and, and not cutting full crowns if I can avoid that. So I try to teach what I do in clinical practice and it's very rare that I'm going to actually cut a full crown. Yeah. You know, and always trying to do a partial. Tell me about your clinical practice. Is it within the university? So I work downtown Montreal. Okay. So I'm practicing right now three days a week. Okay. And teaching the rest of the week. Okay. So, uh, focusing a lot on BioClear restorations. Okay.

[00:19:17] [SPEAKER_02] So a lot of people are finding me because they're educating themselves on, on no cut. Yeah. They don't want their teeth cut.

[00:19:23] [SPEAKER_01] Yeah.

[00:19:23] [SPEAKER_02] So the internet now, and especially with AI is telling them where to go.

[00:19:28] [SPEAKER_01] Yeah.

[00:19:28] [SPEAKER_02] And they're going to direct them to dentists that are doing minimally invasive procedures.

[00:19:33] [SPEAKER_01] I have to admit this. I, uh, so I'm listening to Dave Esham's lecture and he's got this thing about black triangles and, and it's like a sign that he's got it. And I'm thinking, it's a really great idea. Way too many words. It's too much writing. And it's too, so I like literally, I kind of took a picture of it. And then I like, I like threw the picture into Gemini as I'm listening to his lecture. And I generated a little placard for my Facebook site. Cause I mean, I've, I've been certified BioClear forever. And the black triangle thing is literally one of my favorite things to do because it's,

[00:20:02] [SPEAKER_01] I mean, it's like the, it's like the definition of minimally invasive. Yeah. And, and I do a fair amount of it, but I could do a lot more cause I don't think to, he had a lot of really good ideas on how to just kind of make getting more patient understanding acceptance of it. And I literally like within the time when he's lecturing, when you said about AI, AI essentially with at my direction generated a decent, you know, I'm just thinking to myself, this is really funny. I could be doing a lot more with this than I am.

[00:20:29] [SPEAKER_01] And, and the other thing is if you don't get to do a lot of it in your practice, you won't, you know, like, like on some level, if it's, it's the reps that kind of gets you all excited about it. I mean, I can tell you're passionate about it. I'm sure you probably market for it as well in your office.

[00:20:43] [SPEAKER_02] I do. And that came from initially taking these courses with David. He's like, there are not many people doing this. You could be the only one. Yeah. You know, and that's still the case, you know, I'm one of two certified in Michigan.

[00:20:55] [SPEAKER_01] There you go. Yeah.

[00:20:56] [SPEAKER_02] There you go. And people that are listening to this podcast, go for it because likely you can be a niche provider of something that's minimally invasive, this technique, and you could be the only one in your city. Yeah. You know, and it doesn't take much marketing.

[00:21:09] [SPEAKER_01] This is so funny because minimally invasive to me has become essentially my, you know, my relationship with BioClear is like I, in 2005, I went to a meeting. And it was in, on Coronado Island, San Diego. It was called the World Congress of Minimally Invasive Dentistry. Have you ever heard of that? No. It doesn't exist anymore. I don't know when it stopped, but it was, so I went in there and what the World Congress of Minimally Invasive Dentistry was mostly selling inter-oral sandblasters, you know,

[00:21:39] [SPEAKER_01] it was like the, and the product called Carry Free launched at that meeting. And it was really, it was a really good meeting. It was really good. But, but what was so funny, it was a whole bunch of different pieces from different places. Talking about their minimally invasive approach, but it wasn't like, man, you had, you know, Graham Milicich from New Zealand talking about, talking about glass ionomer. And you had people talking about, you know, high magnification.

[00:22:04] [SPEAKER_01] You had people talking about, you know, the FlexiJet, water-based sandblasting. And then you had Carry Free, which was like a medical model. And you had all these, and you're like, it wasn't, as an approach, it was real scattershot. And it was hard to, you know, you could take bits and pieces, but it was kind of hard. And then I look at BioClear and I think, okay, this has kind of got minimally invasive figured out. Like how to execute it actually clinically in your office. It makes a big difference, I think. So it's come a little ways is what I would say.

[00:22:30] [SPEAKER_02] Yeah. And, you know, the whole concept of engaging enamel is really, really key because, you know, as I tell my student, any monkey dentist can bond to enamel. Yeah. Denton is a different story. Yeah. So if you can maximize-

[00:22:42] [SPEAKER_01] Yeah, the more enamel you can get.

[00:22:43] [SPEAKER_02] Yeah, the more enamel you can get, then any dentist with regular skills is able to achieve a good bond. Yeah, for sure. And this is, I think, one of the great successes of BioClear is engaging enamel.

[00:22:55] [SPEAKER_00] Yeah.

[00:22:57] [SPEAKER_01] For sure it is. You know what's funny is like when they show you the preparation, first off, the preparations are not, there's nothing that's cut and dried except what you will say is he doesn't play around with his bevels. He wants you to grab as much enamel as you can. And I loved, God, for years I've been thinking it, you know, where's my margin? I don't know. I don't care. You know, as long as it's clean and you're getting as much enamel. So I loved all that. I mean, it really is. It makes a big difference. I mean, you can seal that up.

[00:23:24] [SPEAKER_01] I was talking about yesterday too about carries removal, how that has changed. Like, you know, at the University of Minnesota, there was one standard for carries removal and that was all of it, whatever that even means. But like, how have you changed, you know, the way that that's taught?

[00:23:37] [SPEAKER_02] Yeah, so cool. So we at McGill are teaching selective carries removal. Good. We are, we have a carryologist, a PhD carryologist in the faculty who is driving this forward. Good. Talking about, you know, when to invade, when not to operate, you know, and now more and more we are not operating. Yeah. You know, and yes, this is not a formula to make money, but it is the right thing to do. Yeah. Yeah. Not to invade, not to operate. Yeah.

[00:24:04] [SPEAKER_02] And leave, leaving carries behind with the whole goal of never exposing the pulp. Yeah. And keeping teeth vital.

[00:24:10] [SPEAKER_01] There's people listening to this that are just, their hair is curling with the very thought of it, but it's like, it's time folks. If you're not looking at this stuff. It really is. I am convinced that that along with honestly high magnification and a bright light makes a huge difference. Like I was talking to someone, I was talking to Josh Solomon earlier about removing decay under a microscope and how it's like, just, it's like night and day difference. Even with, even with my loops, I can't see it as well as I can with, with, so it's

[00:24:36] [SPEAKER_01] like, and you know where to stop, you know what you're looking at. It's all these things. And that stuff that's really hard. It wasn't taught, but more than that, I've only learned it with experience over time.

[00:24:47] [SPEAKER_02] There's one study on very interesting. I don't know if you're familiar with it about a decay removal. It was done in 1985 at the university of Michigan. And it was a study that said that 58% of faculty approved okays. So the instructor would say, go ahead and restore. Back in 85, it was only amalgam and gold preps. But the faculty approved it. 58% of them after you stained with caries detector had decay at the DEJ.

[00:25:17] [SPEAKER_02] Which is a killer. In the dental school. Yeah. And I believe that this is still happening. Yeah. Of course. We, our most important job is to remove caries. Yeah. And now more than ever, the DEJ and that one or two millimeters past it is the seal. So if you want to have restorations that are lasting 20 years now, the seal is the deal.

[00:25:37] [SPEAKER_01] Yeah. Yeah. It's funny because everyone's struggling about, you know, how much do you remove near the pulp. I'm like, that's not the struggle. The struggle is to make sure that you've got your sealed area. You got it. To be honest, you could, my suspicion is you could remove next to none over the pulp if you've got a nice big area of removed decay. And that's like, and that's been my experience. You just don't see this. And everyone's like, oh, but that's going to, the worst part about that is that if another dentist saw it later, they would point a finger at you.

[00:26:06] [SPEAKER_01] Because they don't know well enough. It's kind of wild. The whole thing's kind of wild. Yeah. That's really cool. Yeah. And the actual faculty, I don't talk to that many of them. And you're, that's very, do you find that when you talk with other dental schools that they're moving in the same direction? Or is McGill particularly progressive?

[00:26:28] [SPEAKER_02] Yes, we are moving in the same direction. I was just at a meeting, which is the Consortium of Operative Dentistry Educators. Okay. So the whole Northeast. Okay. We met with Columbia. We met with Harvard. Okay. Penn was there. Tufts was there. Okay. UConn. And we all are in agreement. Okay. In terms of selective carries removal and the principles of carryology now is what we're moving forward with. That's great. Good. It is. It really is good.

[00:26:52] [SPEAKER_01] I just feel like, and maybe there was a standard and I just didn't realize, I just didn't feel like there was a great standard when I was in school. And I mean, it was something that kept me up at night. Because like my dad, I practiced with my dad for the longest time. And I, how do you know? How do you know when it's done? And he's like, he didn't have a great answer either. I mean, it's like on some level clinical experience helps a lot. But I mean, like having a standard that you guys are talking about, teaching, is a huge thing. It's a huge thing. It's very good. Absolutely. So what have you thought about the BioClear meeting, the summit? Have you been to one before? Been?

[00:27:22] [SPEAKER_01] This is my third one. Okay.

[00:27:23] [SPEAKER_02] So I think it's really great. Yeah. Meeting with like-minded people. That's the nicest thing about it, you know, and being able to chat and see what people are doing in their clinic and in their office. Yeah. And of course, seeing David is always a thrill. Yeah. So he's been awesome.

[00:27:37] [SPEAKER_01] He's such a character. Like I said, he's probably been on this show more than any other guest ever. But he's pretty easy to talk to. You don't have to say very much when you're interviewing Dave.

[00:27:47] That's true.

[00:27:48] [SPEAKER_01] Well, Taras, thank you very much for being on. This was fantastic. It's a pleasure, Val, and I really appreciate it. Yeah. It's nice to meet you, and we'll be in touch. Take care.