Sirona introduces new SIDEXIS 4 software

This week at the Chicago Midwinter Meeting, Sirona  introduced the SIDEXIS 4 software, which reportedly improves practitioners' ability to diagnose, plan treatments and communicate their findings with patients.

Private practitioners Neal Patel, DDS, of Powell, Ohio, and Tarun Agarwal, DDS, of Raleigh, NC, recently discussed how the software, with a sleek modern look, has improved their ability to diagnose and treatment plan and-perhaps most importantly-effectively communicate their findings to patients, who are then more likely to accept recommended treatment.

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Like many practitioners, Dr. Agarwal is concerned about potential downtime associated with any change to an existing system. However, he said,  “SIDEXIS 4 takes ease of use to another level. What was previously hidden in the menu bar is now clearly visible in workflow icons arranged to match typical clinical procedures. Our team was using it literally 30 minutes after we installed it.“

Dr. Patel considered the software integration to be seamless and the workflow streamlined, offering the ability to move quickly from the mode of diagnosing an image and transition to patient education, treatment planning and, ultimately, case acceptance. He calls SIDEXIS 4 “the ultimate software of importing and exporting images in various formats,” readily accepting images obtained by intraoral, panoramic, and cephalometric x-rays, 2D and 3D CBCT systems, intraoral cameras, FaceScanner, and more.  

Dr. Patel finds especially valuable the visual patient timeline, which enables the clinician or team member to scroll through a complete patient history to select and retrieve desired images based on acquisition date.  “Before, if I wanted to view an image taken 2 or 3 years earlier of the current area of concern, I would have to close one image to open another. Now I can just scroll through the timeline for the earlier image seamlessly without having to open up folders and search for specific locations.”

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Complementing the timeline, says Dr. Agarwal is the lightbox feature, that, with just a few clicks, enables side-by-side display of multiple images taken over time, offering  objective anatomical comparisons of 2D, 3D, intraoral, or camera images. “If we have a scan or image from a few years back, we are able to take that image and compare it to an image we just took.”

Dr. Patel adds that  ‘comparing apples to apples’-especially cone beams-to be especially powerful for both diagnosis and patient communication. “I can literally drag and drop images and collect them and organize my thoughts using these tools to diagnose more quickly. It also enables me to better convey my diagnosis to the patient with pictures, which themselves speak a thousand words.”

In summary, Dr. Agarwal says, “The imaging is better, the tools offer the ability to control and manipulate the images, all of which add up to better diagnostics, better treatment planning, and better acceptance of the cases we are able to so clearly present to our patients.”

For more information on SIDEXIS 4, visit Sirona at Booth #1625 at the Chicago Midwinter Meeting.