If you have a hammer

We bought a cerec machine six years ago. I’m still working my way through the frequent flyer points!

There’s a danger, when you outlay a lot of money on a piece of equipment such as this, that you feel a need to recoup the cost of purchase and that can drive the wrong type of decision making.

The cerec machine changed my dentistry for ever, and in a good way. It took a while but I feel it is assisting in the delivery of a new paradigm of dentistry.

This instagram post got me thinking. How would I have restored this tooth? Full coverage or with abonded ceramic?

I know that I once would have treated this with full coverage, gold most probably. Now I would try not to.

What would you do?

There is a shift occurring in the way we restore teeth. Interestingly, I feel this is being driven in general practice with opportunities that digital scanning, milling and printing technology offer. I’m not sure that the traditional undergraduate educational institutions have caught up yet?

Since owning the technology I have learned to be better at bonding, using best practice products and techniques. I’ve looked at endless photographs of preps and found a handful of instagram educators who generously post about materials, preps and cases.

Rubber dam is my friend. Interestingly, the ability to place rubber dam and isolate a tooth is more of a determining factor for the restorative material that anything else.

Viewing your prep the size of a pineapple is humbling and a great opportunity to relfect and improve.

How do you learn to trust a different way of doing things? How do you learn to trust the new materials in the long term?

For new graduates who have not benefited from exposure to this technology at dental school, it might feel like the rug has been pulled out from under them.

They have graduated feeling comfortable with traditional retention and resistance form. We rely on the fundamentals as crutches when starting out. When every crown prep is stressful, it’s difficult to push yourself to hang over the edge and try a different style of prep. One where success is dependent on being particular about preparation design, dentine bonding, material handling and isolation.

Far easier to prep the tooth for a full coverage crown and pop it on with some Fuji Plus.

Ceramics are the present and the future for the moment. We need to leverage technology available to us to enhance the longevity of teeth and not just churn out old fashioned nails.

As always, thanks for reading, you can help me grow this newsletter by sharing with a friend of colleague

Rosie