 Practice managers are expected to keep a dental practice moving while balancing patients, clinicians, nurses, reception, compliance, suppliers, finances and an appointment book that rarely behaves itself.
A late crown or an unclear laboratory prescription may look like a small production issue from outside the practice. Inside the practice, it can create a cancelled appointment, an unhappy patient, wasted surgery time, pressure on reception and an uncomfortable conversation for the practice manager. The relationship between a practice and its dental laboratory therefore affects much more than the restoration. It influences capacity, team morale, complaint risk, cash flow and the patient journey. After reviewing the recurring concerns raised across dental management discussions, regulatory expectations and complaint-handling guidance, the central frustration is clear: practice managers need reliability and visibility. They do not want to spend their day chasing information that should already be available.
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 Before anyone reaches for the complaints form, no, dentistry is not actually "f**ked." In fact, there has never been a more exciting time to work in our profession. Digital dentistry is advancing at an incredible pace, materials are stronger than ever, AI is beginning to support clinical workflows, and patients have more treatment options than previous generations could ever have imagined.
So why does it sometimes feel like everyone in the industry is permanently running uphill? Speak to a dentist, a dental technician, a practice manager, a hygienist or even a supplier, and you'll often hear similar frustrations. Recruitment is difficult. Costs continue to rise. Patients expect more while wanting to pay less. NHS pressures continue to dominate headlines. Laboratories struggle to recruit skilled technicians. Regulations increase every year. Everyone seems busier than ever, yet many practices still feel under constant financial pressure. The reality is that dentistry isn't broken. It's simply under more pressure than ever before. As a dental laboratory that works with practices across London and throughout the UK every single day, we see many of these challenges from both sides. The dentist has one perspective. The laboratory has another. The patient has yet another. Somewhere in the middle is where good dentistry still happens. Let's explore why.  If there is one thing that can make a denture look natural, feel comfortable, function properly, and avoid the dreaded “something looks wrong but I don’t know what” conversation with the patient, it is getting the horizontal plane and occlusal plane right.
At Bremadent Dental Laboratory, we receive hundreds of denture bite registrations every year. Many are excellent. Some are detailed, accurate, beautifully marked, and make our technicians quietly emotional in the best possible way. Others arrive with the vertical dimension recorded, but with no clear horizontal plane, no occlusal plane, no facial markings, and no useful indication of how the teeth should sit in relation to the patient’s face. In those cases, the bite rims have often only been used to establish the OVD, the occlusal vertical dimension. That is important, of course. But a denture bite registration should do much more than tell us how open or closed the patient should be. A properly recorded bite rim should transfer the patient’s aesthetics, function, orientation, phonetics, neutral zone, facial features, smile line, and jaw relationship to the laboratory. In simple terms, it should tell us where the teeth need to go. If the bite rim only tells us the OVD, we are missing half the map. And when you are trying to create a natural looking denture, half a map is not ideal. It is a bit like being told to drive to Manchester but only being given the first roundabout.  If someone walked into a dental laboratory ten years ago and said that artificial intelligence, digital scanners, cloud-based workflows, 3D printing, facial scanning, and same-day smile design would become part of everyday dentistry, most technicians would probably have smiled politely and carried on trimming models.
Fast forward to 2026, and dentistry in the UK looks very different. The profession has evolved rapidly. Patients are more informed than ever, clinicians are under increasing pressure, and dental laboratories are no longer simply manufacturing appliances behind the scenes. Modern laboratories are becoming integrated clinical partners, digital workflow providers, technical consultants, and problem-solvers. At Bremadent Dental Laboratory, we have seen this evolution first-hand. Dentistry in 2026 is faster, more digital, more aesthetic-focused, more collaborative, and in many ways more demanding than ever before. At the same time, it is also opening exciting opportunities for practices and laboratories that embrace change, innovation, and strong teamwork. So, what is dentistry really like in the UK in 2026, particularly from the laboratory side? Let’s take a closer look.  Let’s be honest, digital dentistry has revolutionised how we work. Intraoral scanners (IO Scans) have made impressions faster, cleaner, and in many cases, more accurate than traditional putty impressions. But with this transformation comes a new set of challenges, especially when crowns don’t seat the way we expect.
At Bremadent Dental Laboratory we see it, we solve it, and we want to help you minimise remakes, save chairtime and keep patients smiling. |
Private Dental Laboratory in London
 Kash Qureshi - Managing Director, Clinical Dental Technician
About the author:
Kash Qureshi is a Clinical Dental Technician (Denturist) in the U.K who oversees and quality controls over 3000+ fixed and removable prosthesis including implant cases from a clinical and technical aspect monthly at Bremadent Dental Laboratory & Swissedent Denture Clinic in London. www.swissedent.co.uk www.bremadent.co.uk [email protected] Categories
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