The Results of My 35-Year Career...

putting all my discoveries together in an easily usable system!

by Dr. Don McGann, DDS

Over the past 35 years, I have dedicated my life to furthering the profession of orthodontics. During this time, I have been blessed to have discovered a variety of different tools and methods that speed up treatment time, make orthodontics more predictable, and improve patient care. Through it all, my primary goal was to make orthodontics available to every dentist in the world, in a system that could be replicated no matter your level of skill or experience. It has made me immensely proud to see the results of my students throughout the years, and your success has given me the energy to keep forging ahead.

In the past 5 years, as I have focused my energy more on research and development and less on the day to day teaching, the amount of discoveries have exponentially increased, and I have been doing my best to keep the POS family in the loop through my yearly update. I realized that I was teaching a lot of material in a short amount of time, and thus this made many of these concepts difficult to incorporate into the rest of the POS teaching. But, I have always felt that I want my students to have all the information, and how much information they can handle is at their discretion.

As of today, I feel that I have made my final major discovery with my non-compliant system! With this in mind, I have decided to change gears, focusing again not on discovering new concepts, but instead taking everything that I have learned, and making it fit into a cohesive system that any dentist can follow. My goal is to make every POS student capable of performing orthodontics at the same level that I do, with the same predictability and efficiency that I have discovered. Over the next few years, you will see everything getting simpler, and my students will be able to treat cases with unparalleled ease, quality, and consistency.

I am pleased to announce the final Update Mini-Series, “The Results,” a three part summation of my lifeʼs work.  These will be the final 3 updates of my career, and my goal is to make sure every POS graduate has the opportunity to quickly learn my way of orthodontics, and hopefully put all of the small and large discoveries in perspective so that this system can be incorporated thoroughly into your practice, taking your patient care to a whole other level. My hope is that you will take the entire Mini Series, but you can take any of the seminars alone. Obviously 6 days is a very short time to accomplish this goal, and as always you will have the opportunity to retake seminars and get more detail, but I think with the knowledge you have, we can make great strides in these 6 days. Following this Update Mini-Series, I will be retiring from seminar teaching, and shifting into my final position of advisor to the instructor base and supporting unusual case diagnosis. I will still be around (especially with our excellent on-line communication, forum, etc that I plan to keep active on), so do not fear, but I have logged enough miles for many lifetimes and will now assume a more manageable focus. 

By the third installment of the Mini Series (2013 Update), I hope that you will see the next frontier of Orthodontics, where efficiency and predictability are second nature. Miles and the company are planning a celebration of my final Live Seminar Tour at the 2013 Update, and I hope that many of you will join us in celebrating all the strides made to date in the POS family. I think it will be quite a party! I hope that you will take this final ride with me, and I know you will continue to make me proud!

The Results: Part 1 (2011)

The cases shown in this seminar are your everyday “bread and butter” cases. Near class I and to moderate class II starting occlusions of all ages, mixed dentition through adult treatment. The cases used for this teaching will include non-extraction and bicuspid extraction with various anchorage choices to close the extraction space. This will include bimaxillary protrusion, pre-restorative alignment, posterior crossbite, impacted cuspids, deep bite, open bite and even over-coming skeletal resistance are all possible in this seminar. There will NOT be any skeletal anchorage, TMD, perio, orthognathic surgery, nor corticotomy presented. We will have discussions of bracket variations, range of bracket torque for determining skeletal resistance and incisor torque diagnosis, creating dental and surgical vto predictions, and finishing methods. The most important criteria is the difficulty of the case treatment, not the various topics contained within the cases. ALL current students and graduates will be able to do this type of case in your practice and your practice should be full of them!!

You will be shown the current thinking of the most efficient and easiest way to get these cases diagnosed and treated successfully, with the least amount of effort, to make orthodontics the most profitable. TPAs, class II elastics, and 2-step retraction will be rarely found in the new and revised treatment plans that will be made available to thosein attendance.

The Results: Part 2 (2012)

The cases shown in this seminar will represent the ʻmiddleʼ of the complete 64 day POS teaching series of the future. The cases become more difficult than in the 2011 Update, with the class II, deep bite, open bite, etc becoming more severe. Variable extraction sites (molars, cuspids) and maximum anchorage will be added as treatment reaches another level of expertise. Skeletal anchorage will be included in the possible methods of treatment. Orthognathic surgery or corticotomy will NOT be included in any of the cases, although over-coming known skeletal resistance with the application of low forces will be a principle applied to the example cases.

Treatment plan editing and appliance diagnosis now becomes much more important and will be emphasized as this is one of the primary functions of the treating doctor in the clinical setting. You will be given IPsoft patient files as you would receive from a staff member that processed the records for you to create the VTO predictions, treatment decision, treatment plan, and appliance for the staff to follow.

Emphasis will be on setting up cases without the need for patient compliance, putting the success of your case into your hands, and in the process making the treatment outcomes more predictable and efficient. Anything the patient must do besides keep their brackets on and brush their teeth will be considered a negative feature of the treatment plan, but of course may occasionally be used as the best approach in an individual case.

The Results: Part 3 (2013)

The cases shown in this seminar will represent the most difficult cases, including treatment options of orthognathic surgery, skeletal anchorage, and corticotomy as indicated. The full toolbox of principles and treatment methods available in the IP system will allow any POS student to effectively treat these cases, cases that only the most talented specialist with exceptional skills could treat successfully.

Emphasis will be on non-orthognathic surgery approaches as insurance companies and patient resistance makes it more and more difficult to use that treatment modality, but of course surgery will be considered as an option. The barriers are removed and the gloves are off as we show just how effective this system can be. Think of this seminar as a 2-day crash course on treating severe malocclusions. Of course we will not be able to show you everything in this most complex area of orthodontics in 2-days, but you will certainly learn many effective treatment approaches to these cases. After getting a taste of what is possible, you may want to continue with the refined advanced series. All graduates will be able to do a portion of the cases even without advanced training.