Imagine a dental world where innovative implant techniques preserve bone and offer patients more options than ever before.
In this episode of the Secure Dental Podcast, Dr. Noel Liu sits down with Dr. Logan Locke, dentist, owner of Smile Clinic, owner of Capture Oral Health and Beauty, Vice President and Co-Director of the Smile Systems Institute, to talk about the development and promotion of a new dental implant technique called 3 on 6™. Dr. Locke shares insights into the evolution of their company, Smile Systems, highlighting their transition from dentures to screw-retained fixed prosthetics. They discuss the importance of providing patients with various options and stress the significance of proper training and experience for the 3 on 6™ procedure. Dr. Locke touches on the ethical aspect of patient care, emphasizing the need for comprehensive patient education and awareness. He also expresses his aspirations to expand services nationally and to raise awareness and knowledge about the innovative 3 on 6™ technique through various educational channels.
Tune in and discover the ethical commitment behind Smile Systems’ mission to empower patients with comprehensive knowledge about their dental implant choices!
Secure Dental Podcast_Dr. Locke.mp3: this mp3 audio file was automatically transcribed by Sonix with the best speech-to-text algorithms. This transcript may contain errors.
Dr. Noel Liu:
Welcome to the Secure Dental Podcast. Two conversations with the brightest minds in the dental and business communities will share practical tips you can use to scale your practice and create financial freedom for yourself and your family. My name is Dr. Noel Liu, CEO and Dentist at Secure Dental and also co-founder of DentVia. I'm your host for the Secure podcast and I'm so glad you're joining in. All right, guys, this is Dr. Noel Liu here with our Secure Dental podcast. Now, today, I'm doing something really different. I'm not in front of a screen. I'm here live here with Dr. Locke. And this gentleman has flew in from Utah for our show here at Signature Art Smiles. So, let's start. Tell me a little bit background about yourself.
Dr. Logan Locke:
From Salt Lake. So we got, my partner and I Randy Roberts got into implants long time ago. And we started kind of seeing our patient population change as far as old mouth rehab goes. And I don't know if you've.
Dr. Noel Liu:
How did you and Randy meet?
Dr. Logan Locke:
His nephew worked for him, and I knew his nephew, so I got out of dental school.
Dr. Noel Liu:
Wow.
Dr. Logan Locke:
Okay, okay. And got in contact with them. And so they brought me on and credit to Randy, he let me do anything I wanted to do. We were doing some really inexpensive implants, and we just got just a crazy amount of experience, tons of.
Dr. Noel Liu:
Start somewhere, right?
Dr. Logan Locke:
Yeah, you could start there. And it was experience that kind of drove us through the fields, getting further and further into the full mouth rehab.
Dr. Noel Liu:
So that's a great story, because when I started, I started doing implants for free. Yeah, you just did for free. And I was like, you know what, let's just charge for the crowns. And we got tons and tons with those four. We think we hit four digit implant numbers in, like in a matter of a couple of years or something. Oh yeah.
Dr. Logan Locke:
You just push them out. Yeah. People flock to lower cost implant and you do what you can for as long as you need it, and you got the experience where you're doing the best work.
Dr. Noel Liu:
No. Absolutely, absolutely. You know, for for me, my mentor told me that if you're going to place 500 implants, right, the next 500 would be the first 500. You fix it. Yeah. Yeah. Was that the same scenario for you? Yeah, yeah.
Dr. Logan Locke:
You make some mistakes, you learn and figure out what stuff works and what doesn't, and you take more, and you start seeing what other guys are doing and incorporating that into your practice. And then you incorporate bone grafting and all this different stuff. You just add and add and add nice, nice point where you can, you know, take on whatever you want.
Dr. Noel Liu:
So when you got out of dental school, did you start implants right away or did you like go through the process of doing general dentistry?
Dr. Logan Locke:
I started I went to Creighton and my school, a really good school, and they had a really good program for implants. So by the time I had left, I had placed or participated in placing like 30 implants in school.
Dr. Noel Liu:
School.
Dr. Logan Locke:
Wow. Okay. Left. I had a really cool mentor from South Dakota, Dr. Lewison, and he let me do a ton. And I went up to his office frequently and we just kind of hung out with him. He just did a lot of implants in South Dakota.
Dr. Noel Liu:
And so that is where you got the passion?
Dr. Logan Locke:
Yeah, it was just nice. I loved it when I was in school. And so afterward when I actually got into a residency program, that kind of a hundred implants or so in a year, which I thought was great.
Dr. Noel Liu:
Did you get to place 100?
Dr. Logan Locke:
You know, I ended up kind of bailing on that when I met Dr. Roberts.
Dr. Noel Liu:
Oh, okay.
Dr. Logan Locke:
And so I bailed on my residency because they kind of had a more promising experience. I ended up probably doing triple that.
Dr. Noel Liu:
First-year out of school. Did you place any implants?
Dr. Logan Locke:
Oh, my first year out of school, I probably placed 300.
Dr. Noel Liu:
Wow.
Dr. Logan Locke:
So it was a good choice. It was a hard choice to make in the moment to skip the residency program, but I got really good experience.
Dr. Noel Liu:
Did you ever do any general dentistry?
Dr. Logan Locke:
I do a lot, I still do, I enjoy okay, okay, molar root canals I enjoy.
Dr. Noel Liu:
You still do those.
Dr. Logan Locke:
Oh, I still do that all. Yeah I enjoy veneers.
Dr. Noel Liu:
Oh, nice.
Dr. Logan Locke:
I'll still do I like and I think the aesthetic side of dentistry doing a set of veneers can contribute to success. And the.
Dr. Noel Liu:
Full arch is.
Dr. Logan Locke:
3.6 full arch right? Right. Same thing, same thing with dentures. I tell everyone if you can do a really solid wax rim because people don't do wax rims as much anymore, but learning how to do a wax rim if you can get incisal positioning in your midline and lip posture, all that kind of stuff. That's what in the operating room.
Dr. Noel Liu:
So it's kind of like learning how to do dentures.
Dr. Logan Locke:
If you can do a really good denture.
Dr. Noel Liu:
You can do this three on six.
Dr. Logan Locke:
You can do the prosthetic side of this. Now you've got to you've got to. That's the hard part with FP1 is you're incorporating the prosthetic side, the surgical side, the tissue, and everything together. You've just got to merge it all.
Dr. Noel Liu:
And perio and yeah all of all of it surgery. So no that's great. So tell me something real quick. When did you move to Utah?
Dr. Logan Locke:
I grew up in Utah, so I've been there.
Dr. Noel Liu:
Oh, so you went to school? Okay, I understood school.
Dr. Logan Locke:
I actually did my first year of dental school with the students at the University of Utah with med students. Oh, wow. Was a program that doesn't exist anymore. So we did one year at the University of Utah, then three in Omaha. Creighton.
Dr. Noel Liu:
Oh that's great. That's great. So today, what's going on in your life? Like what do you kind of tied in?
Dr. Logan Locke:
So, Doctor Shore, he came to us for a training and this was one six.
Dr. Noel Liu:
Last year or some some earlier this year.
Dr. Logan Locke:
A few months ago.
Dr. Noel Liu:
Few months ago.
Dr. Logan Locke:
We weren't that that long ago. So, Dr. Shore, he's passionate about this stuff. As you know. He loves it, right? He came to our training. We've been developing 3 on 6™ for a long time. There's a couple of things special. Think about 3 on 6™
Dr. Noel Liu:
So what is 3 on 6™
Dr. Logan Locke:
So 3 on 6™ is a classification of FP1 okay. Which is keeping your similar tooth shape and size okay when you're doing full mouth rehab, and the way we do it, we break it into three bridges once the healing process is complete.
Dr. Noel Liu:
Okay? Which is why. The first one was three. Yeah. Okay. Okay.
Dr. Logan Locke:
Three bridges on six implants. Gotcha. So there's a couple things that have really helped with 3 on 6™. The patient side, you're getting a lot of people and a lot of patients with the way the internet is and the way people do research now. They're starting to realize that there's an option beyond Fp3. Correct? Correct. And this is where I was kind of getting to at the beginning, our patient base, is getting younger and younger.
Dr. Noel Liu:
Exactly.
Dr. Logan Locke:
It's I mean, you're seeing a lot of extradition that's just annihilated the teeth really broken down the dentition. And I'd had to do a young lady from Atlanta, she was 26 years old.
Dr. Noel Liu:
Oh wow.
Dr. Logan Locke:
That was you know, so if you think about doing an Fp3, sometimes that's the only option. Right. And we're not playing the use of Fp3. But in a 26 year old that has good, relatively good tissue, relatively good health, sure. Bone levels, they've just got broken down dentition. So what are they doing that amount of bone. Yeah.
Dr. Noel Liu:
So what are they looking for typically like when they want to let's say want to extract. Otherwise before FP1 what was the other option, like a denture maybe? Right.
Dr. Logan Locke:
Yeah, a denture, or they're going Fp3 in there and then.
Dr. Noel Liu:
Just taking.
Dr. Logan Locke:
Bone off you know. And in a 26 year old. Yeah that's tough because what if the implants fail.
Dr. Noel Liu:
And then now you got no bone, right.
Dr. Logan Locke:
Where are you leaving them? Even if they have to go to a denture.
Dr. Noel Liu:
See that was my whole issue with Fp3 is because they're treating it like one size fits all. Yeah. And cleaning up the arch and just placing four implants. Six implants.
Dr. Logan Locke:
And you've seen these bone trophies. You know, that was a big thing for a while. It's kind of slowed down a little bit. But we saw a lot of and when I got out of school, we were seeing a lot of people posting bone trophies where they were just even with the implants.
Dr. Noel Liu:
Right. Well, they were.
Dr. Logan Locke:
What they were doing. You see, the guys that would just saw off, they would leave the teeth in and they'd just take a 5-57 and yeah, yeah, flat plane it, break that all off, and then pick the root tips out, which is a quick way to do it, obviously. But when you're moving that amount of bone on a healthy patient, it just doesn't make any sense.
Dr. Noel Liu:
So the way I look at it this way, it's the FP1, it's more like an option. Like you have a separate option for younger patients with good alveolar ridge. Right. Good height. And why take it out when. Yeah when the patient has good bone.
Dr. Logan Locke:
If you think about it. And we do this frequently, if you're an implant dentist you've probably done an implant bridge 7 to 10. Right. Someone that's lost those front four teeth. We do it all the time. We do a bridge 7 to 10. You're not hacking off a lot of bone, right? And when we're doing that, it's the same thing.
Dr. Noel Liu:
Same concept.
Dr. Logan Locke:
Yeah, we're just extending that to the posterior as well.
Dr. Noel Liu:
So any listeners like listening out there. Right. They're not they kind of need to understand. It's like doing immediate implants. Yeah. Right. And then doing immediate with like a bridge.
Dr. Logan Locke:
And immediate and it we're immediately loading the majority of the time.
Dr. Noel Liu:
Right.
Dr. Logan Locke:
Reason being we're trying to develop Pontic sites. We're trying to create tissue. You can do that without immediately loading, it's just a lot harder. Once the implants have integrated tissues kind of healed into a flat, it becomes a lot more difficult. So you can immediately load it and you have a good prosthetic design, takes a good lab that knows how to do it, and then it takes a good amount of training in order to figure out where you're positioning everything in order to create the tissue. A.
Dr. Noel Liu:
Absolutely, I was here this morning, and this patient you guys did a case last night yesterday finished up last night. Patient was walking out. Looked amazing. He was happy I mean yeah he was excited. Yeah he's excited I mean he was even that older kind of a gentleman. And and you guys really rocked it out.
Dr. Logan Locke:
Alex did a Dr. Shore did a great job. Yeah. Crushed it yesterday. Timing went really well. Patient woke up super smooth. And today he was ecstatic.
Dr. Noel Liu:
So today you are. We are here in his office in Chicago. You guys flew out of Utah, right.
Dr. Logan Locke:
So when we after we do our training, this isn't hard thing to do. Yeah. And we don't ever downplay that. We actually when we bring people into our training, we kind of make sure they're qualified for it. At this point. We used to take anyone on.
Dr. Noel Liu:
So based on that statement, who is it for?
Dr. Logan Locke:
This is for...
Dr. Noel Liu:
Who would be like an ideal student coming in, into the course?
Dr. Logan Locke:
Someone like, Dr. Shore that's done FP3 okay, that has an extended amount of implant experience. Sure knows how the bone graft that just needs a little bit more training and skill in order to do that arena, the FP1. If you haven't done a lot of implants, we need that experience beforehand. You're going to experience failures. Anyone that places implants.
Dr. Noel Liu:
Correct. Correct.
Failures. And you have to know how you're going to deal with those.
Dr. Noel Liu:
So so in your definition of experience, what would it be for someone who is placed, let's say, you know, 1500 implants? And is that are they...
Dr. Logan Locke:
A good place, five, 600 implants? Okay, of course, of a career if you, you know, you know how to do socket preservation. Sure. I think ridge augmenting is a really good thing to know about. We try and avoid sinus work if we can. So but, occasionally we've got to do some sinus lifting, that kind of thing. So if you have that good surgical background and if you've done FP3 and you've dealt with the complications, right, it's not much different going into FP1.
Dr. Noel Liu:
Just tweaking it a little bit here and there.
Dr. Logan Locke:
Right. And we're figuring out how to be a little more conservative. And the tissue management, that's where tissue management, tissue management becomes more complex.
Dr. Noel Liu:
I'm really intrigued with FP1 and 3 on 6™ is because there's not a lot of bone reduction. And I think that's huge. Yeah. You know people need to understand that as providers we need to give our patient options. Right?
Dr. Logan Locke:
And that's what it's about. It's about being able to think ethically. We have to present those options and say, even if you can't do FP1, the patient should know that that is an option out there, right? Correct. And that they have good enough bone that they can keep it. It just needs to be done properly.
Dr. Noel Liu:
So with that being said, do you still do FP3s?
Dr. Logan Locke:
Yeah. Yeah, yeah. I mean sometimes that's the only thing you can do. Correct. Right there in a denture. And they come in, they've lost a lot of alveolar, lost height. You've got to build back up. Then FP3 is the option to, you know, FP2 you can do some longer, longer teeth. So it's good to have all the.
Dr. Noel Liu:
All the options on the table. Right. So 3 on 6™? Tell us a little bit about it. Who are the founders? What's going on? And what's the projection and what's the future for 3 on 6™? Yeah.
Dr. Logan Locke:
So Smile Systems is the parent company Smile Systems that was started by my partner Dr. Randy Roberts.
Dr. Noel Liu:
Okay.
Dr. Logan Locke:
I partnered in with him at our clinic in in Taylorsville, Utah, and then in me and him. I was kind of at the beginning process when he started doing that.
Dr. Noel Liu:
Oh, wow.
Dr. Logan Locke:
And we were doing them with Cerec. We were doing them for 10,000 an arch.
Dr. Noel Liu:
So you guys just kind of like, what were the Warriors,right? The trailblazers. Right? Yeah. Yeah, yeah.
Dr. Logan Locke:
Figuring out how to do it because we weren't keen on the idea of just chopping off all these people. So we started off, really humbly and designing things ourselves, and it took forever. And it was hard. And we did start off with dentures and then we would we would load afterwards.
Dr. Noel Liu:
Wow!
Dr. Logan Locke:
And then we slowly we, we started building our own lab that was able to handle these cases. And we brought on more experienced people and, and eventually we got to the point where, well, and then we were doing it cement retained which was fun difficulties.
Dr. Noel Liu:
Okay.
Dr. Logan Locke:
But it worked, it worked and it worked well. But then screw-retained complications were harder to manage.
Dr. Noel Liu:
Correct, correct.
Dr. Logan Locke:
And then we, we we had a really good partner in that helped us kind of move on to more screw retained. And that's kind of where we are right now as a screw-retained fixed prosthetic immediately loaded. We did the whole.
Dr. Noel Liu:
What did the whole process look like? Like how many years?
Dr. Logan Locke:
Let's see. I think I did my first 3 on 6™, that was designed by Sarah probably 5 or 6 years ago. Wow. Okay. 5 or 6 years of development and.
Dr. Noel Liu:
Just perfecting.
Dr. Logan Locke:
The system. Perfecting the system. Right. And Randy, he started off doing maybe 1 to 2 a year, and then it worked into it started to get a little more popular. And then the name became well known. We created the content, and we're starting to help patients be aware that there's another option.
Dr. Noel Liu:
Another option. Absolutely.
Dr. Logan Locke:
They don't understand FP1, FP2, FP3, no, no they're not going to research FP1.
Dr. Noel Liu:
So how did you guys come up with 3 on 6™? The name?
Dr. Logan Locke:
I think it was probably a play on all on right.
Dr. Noel Liu:
Right right.
Dr. Logan Locke:
And so it was well let's how many implants do we need to look at the bridge. 7 to 10.
Dr. Noel Liu:
Sure. Sure.
Dr. Logan Locke:
That all the time or we do a bridge in the posterior if they've got bone and we say okay, well how many do we need to get that in? We need three on six. We also.
Dr. Noel Liu:
Hold it. That's a great name by the way.
Dr. Logan Locke:
Four on eight. So some people, if they have a little bit more bone in the posterior and they want to split the midline, which is a little more aesthetic. Right. We can because right now our implant positioning basically goes 3-6-7, 10-11 four. Oh wow okay okay. That's kind of the what we're training is a standard implant positioning.
Dr. Noel Liu:
Correct. Correct.
Dr. Logan Locke:
And then we deviate from that if we need to.
Dr. Noel Liu:
So you could have eight implants. You could have six implants. Yeah.
Dr. Logan Locke:
So four on eight. We'll do four bridges over eight implants. Sure. That creates a split right at the midline, which is the aesthetic option for some patients. Gets them a little bit more teeth in the posterior. So that's not true.
Dr. Noel Liu:
So what's the future?
Dr. Logan Locke:
Future is patient awareness. We're we're growing. We've got YouTube channels. People are watching our videos. They're starting to learn. We've got a lot more out there on social media than just once you get this.
Dr. Noel Liu:
Awareness right, right.
Dr. Logan Locke:
Patients understand that you're getting these these younger people and they're going in and they you don't don't know if you've had a consult for an all in four. You generally don't tell them, well, I'm going to shave off ten millimeters.
Dr. Noel Liu:
And that does not go very well with someone.
Dr. Logan Locke:
It's not going to go super well. So a lot of times they don't know. We had a video of a young lady that had it done on, it was a TikTok video. She had it done and she opened up her mouth and she was showing the camera the picture of the full FP3 on her lower, and it was a good looking FP3. I think it was done really well, but it was synthetic. It's thick, it's thick. So she wasn't aware that that's what it was going to be. And so we had one of our 3 on 6™ coordinators made a video kind of explaining the difference with three on six, the size of the bridges being a lot more natural feeling. And I think within two days that had 90,000 views or something like that.
Dr. Noel Liu:
Wow!
Dr. Logan Locke:
You're starting to get patients aware of this being out there. But the other trial is getting the providers that are able to do it for one's heart.
Dr. Noel Liu:
It is, it is, very, very technique sensitive. Right. You guys are making the patients aware, the community aware of it. What about the education portion? Like, are you guys like actually taking time to explain to patients and on your YouTube channel?
Dr. Logan Locke:
Yeah. So on the channels we're explaining what it is, why it's important to know about it, the how you can preserve bone.
Dr. Noel Liu:
Very nice.
And then like I said then it's okay, we need a provider and Doctor Shore he's done, and Smile Systems is kind of designed to not only provide the training for it or we also help with the marketing. We're creating the content.
Dr. Noel Liu:
Exactly.
Dr. Logan Locke:
And Doctor Shore being here in Chicago, he's just...
Is he like A one-off for you guys?
Dr. Logan Locke:
We have we have a lot of providers that are doing really well. This is start. This is probably the first big market we've entered into. And we've got a few more coming from bigger markets San Diego, Austin I think. So these bigger markets are starting to come.
Dr. Noel Liu:
So the plan, is to spread nationwide?
Dr. Logan Locke:
Yeah. We've got once we can start doing once we have the providers available, then we nationwide marketing in Utah at our office we're getting it's basically Doctor Roberts, myself, and then we have Doctor Weisenberg. This is all we're doing now. Besides, I like to throw in some general...
Dr. Noel Liu:
General Dentistry here in there.
Dr. Logan Locke:
You know, just keeps me know that's.
Dr. Noel Liu:
That's love it.
Dr. Logan Locke:
Skills up. But we're we're doing over 30 arches a month of just...
Dr. Noel Liu:
Wow!
Dr. Logan Locke:
3 on 6™.
Dr. Noel Liu:
Wow!
Dr. Logan Locke:
And we have patients flying in from all over the country. Well, we, ideally we want those patients to be able to get this procedure done close to them.
Dr. Noel Liu:
Right, right.
Dr. Logan Locke:
Do this out of state.
Dr. Noel Liu:
So that's incredible.
Dr. Logan Locke:
Yeah. So we want and you know a testament to our marketing. Dr. Shore has been just getting consult after consult. I think this is already, so we did three arches this weekend. I think he's already done four.
Dr. Noel Liu:
Correct.
Dr. Logan Locke:
Beyond this. So in the first three months and he's killing it, he's got another four arches planned. Yeah he's he's doing really well. He's ramping it up and he's ramping up good.
Dr. Noel Liu:
No that's great. So for a provider like who's looking into this course, how do they get a hold of the course coordinator? Or whoever is putting this together? What is the info?
Dr. Logan Locke:
On 3on6.com There's information on...
Dr. Noel Liu:
3on6.com okay.
Dr. Logan Locke:
They can they can also contact us my on through Instagram. We have three on six on Instagram okay.
Dr. Noel Liu:
Three on six. And so it's number three.
Dr. Logan Locke:
Number three.
Dr. Noel Liu:
On. And number six. Yeah. Awesome. Well any last words.
Dr. Logan Locke:
No no. We're excited to be here. Dr. Shores I know he's we love coming. It's been fun to come out here and see his progression already since his training.
Dr. Noel Liu:
I mean, he called me up last night. He's like, hey, you know what? Doc's coming in and you know he's going to have a team, you know, come out here and help him out. I was like, all right, cool. Count me in. He's like, yeah, you should come over. And I'm like, all right, cool, man. It's been fun. And yeah, it's been so exciting. Like speaking with you and knowing like the kind of a little background about 3 on 6™ and how you guys started. Yeah. So that was awesome.
Dr. Logan Locke:
Yeah. Appreciate you coming.
Dr. Noel Liu:
Well, great. Hey, thank you very much for your time.
Dr. Logan Locke:
You're welcome.
Dr. Noel Liu:
All right, all right, ladies and gentlemen, so this is Dr. Noel Liu checking out. Make sure to, like, subscribe. And we will be in touch, checking out with Doctor Locke. And we're going to finish up the surgery with Doctor Alex Shore. Back in.
Dr. Noel Liu:
Thanks for tuning in to the Secure Dental Podcast. We hope you found today's podcast inspiring and useful to your practice and financial growth. For Show notes resources and ways to stay engaged with us, visit us at noelliudds.com. That's N-O-E-L-L-I-U-D-D-S.com.
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Dr. Locke graduated Magna Cum Laude from the University of Utah with a degree in finance. He was then accepted into the prestigious Regional Dental Education Program and attended Creighton Dental School on scholarship.
Dr. Locke loves all aspects of dentistry but has received extensive training in oral surgery and implants. He is also trained in facial esthetics, including the use of Botox and dermal fillers.