BOC Winners in Practice: GreenMark Biomedical’s LumiCare™ Caries Detection Rinse

Dr. Lou Graham tells us about his experience with LumiCare™ Caries Detection Rinse.

DPR: Tell us a bit about you and your practice?

Dr. Graham: I have been practicing now for over 30 years in the Hyde Park community of Chicago. The practice is just outside the perimeter of the University of Chicago, so a significant part of our patient mix comes from the school, hospital and other affiliates.

In 2006, I expanded the practice to include specialists, additional GP’s, and a great team to surround us. Our overall philosophy is minimally invasive and I have been teaching that core philosophy from when I directed the University’s GPR program to my national audiences.

DPR: How did you learn about LumiCare™ rinse?

Dr. Graham: I was teaching at the 2016 ADA meeting in Denver when Dr. Steven Bloembergen, founder and CEO of GreenMark, and his wife Dr. Wendy Bloembergen, VP Clinical Affairs for GreenMark, asked if they could meet about a project they were in the early stages of putting together. The project was still under development back then, and when they explained it to me, I told them, this could truly change caries diagnostics in dentistry, and I was very excited in learning more. Four years later, I can now tell you GreenMark has a technology that allows a team member to provide a chairside rinse to specifically target the subsurface of carious lesions in enamel, so you can quickly detect the disease in its earliest stages well before a cavity forms. You simply illuminate the open, porous lesions using a blue light and orange glasses. The NIH has provided multiple grants to the company and they are also working on a non-invasive treatment to target the delivery of enamel-like crystals to restore carious lesions in a much more natural way than our traditional surgical approach. This falls right into my philosophy of saving teeth till their 85th birthdays! It is so innovative and will be a true disruptor in our profession, a very positive one. With patients living longer and longer, early caries diagnostics will transform our recall visits and I think bring more and more patients to our offices for preventive and diagnostic care.

DPR: What made you invest in LumiCare™ rinse for your practice?

Dr. Graham: I can’t wait to start using the rinse on a routine basis in my practice. The product should be available later this year, as it is pending FDA Clearance as a 510(k) Class II Device. GreenMark had its first meeting with FDA in 2018, submitted its full dossier in 2019, and is at the tail end of addressing FDA’s requirements for safety and efficacy. Clearance is expected this year. As soon as it is available, we will start using it in our clinic as part of the routine dental exam applied by our 5 hygienists and dental assistants.

The LumiCare™ rinse targets and illuminates porous sub-surface lesions in enamel, thereby aiding in the detection of caries, and of course caries diagnosis is to be made by a dental professional based on the entirety of the clinical exam. The product is a mouth rinse that works on all tooth surfaces, it is quick and fits into the standard workflow of the routine dental exam. The LumiCare™ test is applied for 30 seconds as a mouth rinse, and then after you do a quick water rinse & air dry, only subsurface carious lesions illuminate. The dentist simply comes in at the end to confirm the results and make the diagnosis. There is a 2 minute video that illustrates the product, which you can see at GreenMark’s home page at greenmark.bio.

DPR: What has your experience using LumiCare™ rinse been like, and how has it been most useful to your practice?

Dr. Graham: I haven’t used the rinse yet, because it is still pending FDA Clearance. The company plans to launch the rinse in the fourth quarter of this year. Given the option of an explorer (which studies show has a high false negative and false positive rate) versus a non-invasive caries detection rinse, I openly can’t wait for both myself and my Catapult Evaluators to see this product put into action. Imagine knowing if a lesion is active versus arrested/dormant. That’s simply a game changer. This will allow us to customize our approach patient by patient in our risk assessment, and shouldn’t that be our ultimate goal in both diagnostics and treatment? As dentists we have no way to differentiate between them. This is the “Holy Grail” of Minimally Invasive Dentistry, and the LumiCare rinse is designed to do just that. If you’d like to learn more, I interviewed Steven as part of my “New Norm” series, see episode 40 at https://www.catapulteducation.com/the-new-norm.