Although studies have produced varying answers, most everyone agrees that because X-rays emit low-level radiation, “X-rays should be used only when needed for proper care,” said Dillon, of the orthodontics association. “It’s not a consumer thing where you throw $100,000 of advertising at it and force the issue.”īecause Dolphin’s machine is being marketed primarily as an alternative to X-rays, it raises the question of just how dangerous dental X-rays are to patients. “We think in the long run that every orthodontist who practices will have to have this kind of machine,” said Dolphin President Allen Lay, who also is a principal of Southern California Ventures in Los Angeles, one of the venture capital firms that funded Dolphin.īut even Evans acknowledged that “you have to go relatively slowly” in marketing such a device. “There are landmarks on skeletal structures that you can’t get to with the Dolphin,” he said. Simply put, the DigiGraph doesn’t provide enough information about all of the bones and tissue in a patient’s head that are involved in orthodontics, Turley said. But the machine right now “is nowhere close to being able to replace the X-ray for diagnostic purposes,” he said. Turley, an orthodontist at UCLA who said he has seen the DigiGraph demonstrated, said “the concept Dolphin has is a good one” because “we need to continue looking for an alternative” to X-rays. that is a clear-cut alternative to dental X-rays.”ĭr. in Chicago, said, “We have not seen any technology out there. Phil Weintraub, spokesman for the American Dental Assn. Louis hasn’t yet taken “any particular stance on this equipment,” spokesman Mike Dillon said.
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If that happened, Dolphin would haul in $3 million in sales.īut hoping to make those sales and actually ringing them up are two different things. It hopes to sell an additional 100 over the next year, said Derek Evans, Dolphin’s vice president of marketing. Since it got FDA permission to sell the machine for a profit, the company has sold six systems to orthodontists in Utah, Florida and other states. Now privately held Dolphin faces its next challenge: persuading the nation’s 7,500 orthodontists and some of its 100,000 dentists to largely abandon their X-ray machines-which typically cost between $15,000 and $40,000-and buy a DigiGraph to treat the 3 million Americans who each year wear braces or otherwise receive orthodontic treatment.ĭolphin, with FDA approval, earlier sold 55 machines at cost to the dental industry so that it could collect research data for the agency.