Dental Asia March/April 2023

BEHIND THE SCENES
Heralding the era of digital
dental technicians
CAD/CAM dental technician Kristina Vaitelytė shares her influences in
pursuing a career in dental technology and gives a millennial’s view on
how digital workflows can attract more young people to the dental field.
By Caitlan Reeg
Kristina Vaitelyte is a firm believer that
digital tools in dentistry are the present
and the future — a way to connect
patients, dentists and technicians together,
ensuring a seamless workflow. Having
seen the dental industry adopting digital
workflows, the accuracy, predictability,
and repeatability offered by these new
techniques allow dentists, and technicians
the confidence to deliver the perfect
results, time after time.
Inspired by the new technologies arriving
on the dental scene, she strives to explore,
trial, and adopt the latest workflows and
techniques. She works daily with exocad’s
DentalCAD software and believes it is
the number one tool to deliver bespoke
digital designs for aesthetic and restorative
dentistry at Primo Dental and Primo Dental
Design Studio. Read on as she shares more.
First, tell us about yourself.
Vaitelyte: I am Lithuanian and currently live
in Chester, UK. I am a digital dental technician
at Primo Dental Studio who lives and breathes
dental technology. I am from a dental family
— my mom set a trend for everyone. She is
a dentist, my dad is a dental technician, my
brother is a prosthodontist and my sister is a
ceramist. How lucky am I! For me, my normal
childhood was playing with dental chairs,
stamping patient cards with dentist details,
and playing with impression plaster in the
dental practice where my mom was working
in the mid-1990s.
My family members are massive dental
fans. I grew up with dental catalogues on
the kitchen table. Believe it or not, even
our family holidays were always at the IDS
in Cologne, Germany, around my birthday.
It is weird how things change in life, I
never actually thought I’d go into dental
technology. When I looked at the analogue
approach, it all looked messy, and I am not
the biggest fan of the monomer smell either.
However, going to IDS in 2013 changed my
life. That year was quite a big dental CAD/
CAM exhibition, and I was intrigued. Seeing
new software and milling units looked like a
winning combination of both technology and
dentistry worlds colliding. It was a eureka
moment for me.
How did you get your start in CAD?
Vaitelyte: I kind of fell into this by accident.
My sister was a massive influence on me.
She was working in a newly established
digital dental laboratory way back in 2014,
and they didn’t have anyone to work with
the system. At that time, no roles like this
existed. My sister and I persuaded the
laboratory manager to give me a week. By the
end of that week, I was producing zirconia
copings, cutback crowns and bridges, and it
snowballed from there.
I applied to university to study dental
technology, and from there I had
opportunities to practice my studies first in
Tenerife where I built my knowledge about
immediate load cases, dental tourism, and,
of course, enjoyed the sun. Next, to the UK
where I originally planned to stay only for
three months, but we all know how “plans’’
work. I met amazing people, worked with
some of the greatest dentists in the UK, and
it grew from there exponentially. I have been
here ever since.
46 DENTAL ASIA MARCH / APRIL 2023