Charting Thoughts

DavidWolf · Post by **DavidWolf** » Fri Aug 03, 2007 7:44 am

The graphical tooth chart is an amazing part of open dental. It is such a strong tool to be able to visually access the patient's existing and planned restorations.

However, one thing that it lacks is the ability to chart dental pathology that is not linked to a procedure. I know the standard work around for watch lesions is to type them into the box below the chart which works fine.

I have recently changed the properties of a custom procedure code for charting lesions which are not planned for treatment. I changed the tooth note procedure to paint like a dark filling and changed the treatment area to surface; it works great. In the tooth note for that lesion I can type watch or non-restorable referred for extraction. I can also set the priority to watch or diagnosis. It allows me to make the graphical chart more accurate.

When I am charting I just say "make a tooth note #30 Distal watch" My assistant select #30 selects surface =D, selects priority = watch and selects procedure = tooth note.
Done!

I am wondering if a paint type would be helpful for this purpose. Perhaps a diagnostic paint type for the graphical chart, maybe it could paint yellow instead of red????

For now my new way of charting lesions which are not attached to a procedures works great. If the lesion advances I just select the tooth note and change the procedure code to the filling type and the restoration is planned.

The fact that Open Dental is so customizable is one of its greatest attributes!!!

Just some thoughts.
Dave Wolf

Post by **jordansparks** » Fri Aug 03, 2007 1:23 pm

It's not another paint type we need. It's another status. When we add a "condition" status, there will be two additional colors for you to customize: a light and dark version for that status. It's been planned for quite some time. But it's competing with a few other features that have a higher wow factor: annotations that show next to the tooth, and bubble info. Now that we have the bubbles working in the Appointments module, we will apply that same concept to the tooth chart.