In this episode of the Stress-Free Dentist Podcast, Dr. Eric Block, a dentist, author and host of the show, goes solo for what he calls a "deep dive" into class two composites. He took the name from one of his favorite podcasts and says he wants to do a few episodes where he focuses on a single topic. Class two composites, he says, were "one of the most stressful things I had to do all day." He dreaded seeing them on the schedule and was never sure which technique to use. Now he has a step-by-step workflow for them, which he describes as a recipe, and he shares his back-to-back class two composite workflow in this episode. His message throughout is that every practice is different, so the important thing is to have a workflow that works for you.

The walk-through follows the whole appointment. His assistant greets and confirms the patient, places topical anesthetic and sizes the patient for the isolation device. Dr. Block then gets the patient numb, usually with a buccal infiltration of Septocaine, and uses a longer plan for lower molars: a nerve block, a buccal infiltration and a rescue injection if needed. Every case is tested with a piece of cotton soaked in Endo-Ice, and his rule is "no pass through the icy, no drilling." Once the patient is numb and the isolation device is in, he works from a specific set of burs. For back-to-back class twos he uses two bands, one wedge and one ring, then a flowable first layer and a bulk fill. He explains why two bands still give a good proximal contact, and why he photographs the decay before filling, so that patients "own that problem."

He closes with what the workflow has done for his day. Two teeth take about half an hour, lower molars about 40 minutes, and three or four fillings about an hour, and he says he no longer dreads quadrant fillings on his schedule. He also covers checking the bite with thick blue carbon paper, stocking every operatory cart the same way and color coding trays, and says the system puts his "brain on autopilot." Dr. Block ends by pointing listeners to his software, Flomo, where he stores his workflows and instrument pictures so his team stays on the same page, and says a deep dive on crowns is next.