It aids in early diagnosis and early detection of disease. How many times have patients arrived at your office with pain, yet your radiograph tells you nothing-and they can't determine which tooth is hurting them? Periapical radiographs can be limiting because they don't always tell the whole story; we need a certain amount of cortical bone to break down before a periapical radiolucency will ever show up on an X-ray. Add some referred pain to the mix, and you really have a diagnostic dilemma. Th is is something I see all day, every day. It's not just frustrating to the patient; it's frustrating for me as well. The horrible feeling of not being able to help my patients right away plagued me for years, until I invested in my cone beam. Using the cone beam means I don't have to wait for bony breakdown of the cortical plate to occur; now I can see right through that buccal bone and view the bone immediately adjacent to the root. The guessing game is officially over. Instead of making my patient wait for the symptoms to get worse before I treat, I can treat right away. An example: Fig. 1 is a PA of a 56-yearold woman who had pain when she saw her general dentist. Her dentist recommended antibiotics, ibuprofen and hydrocodone because of her level of pain. By the time she got to me, she had absolutely no pain Fig. 4 Fig. 1 Fig. 2 Fig. 5 Fig. 3 Fig. 6 dentaltown.com \\ AUGUST 2018 95http://www.dentaltown.com