tips and tricks

I had a day off during the university break and decided to half a day observing in the public specialist clinic. I observed the final impressions of  35 and 37 implants for fabrication of a fixed bridge. This was part of a larger rehabilitation where the other teeth had already been restored with crowns. There was an existing model with implant analogues in it but the new impression was to capture the implant position with the tooth supported crowns in place. I jotted down some notes in regards to this procedure: General notes:  He was extremely neat and particular and knew what to do at each stage of the procedure. his tone was calm and he explained things slowly and thoroughly to his patient and DA. Everything was measured precisely with no haphazardness or waste or sloppiness e.g picking up adhesive on a swab was done precisely with half the swab delicately dabbed in the liquid rather than dunked in as I do. He was precise with the amount of blue wax he put in the embr...

Teeth are brittle materials. What works so well is the fact that the materials that make up a tooth work so well synergistically to give the best of all the materials. Enamel is extremely hard but extremely brittle which allows it to cut and grind through foods with not much damage to the tooth surface. Dentine on the other hand is still quite hard but due to its lower mineral content has some flexibility to it. Enamel and dentine are bonded together at the CEJ and the flexibility of dentine supports the enamel to avoid it cracking. As we age, the mineral content of dentine starts to increase, enamel becomes thinner due to wear and along with accumulation of chewing cycles cracks will start to appear in enamel and risk of tooth fracture becomes higher. It is inevitable that things eventually will wear and break. Our mission is to try and make this happen as slowly as possible. Everything is important in this regard from preparation design, material choice and occlusal design. One tre...

The temperature of any material hastens its setting and breakdown. Composite resin has the desirable property of being command set with our curing lights so the temperature variations with composite resin are mainly to affect its handling properties. Too cold: Composite that is too cold will be thicker and more crumbly. Arguably this is beneficial to allow you to pack composite against a matrix band to generate a tighter contact that will stay in place while you cure. However the fact that it comes out of the capsules and tubes crumbly ensures that it will be impossible for you to avoid incorporating a void in your restoration. The most crumbly part tends to be right at the nozzle which is also the part exposed to air and likely to dry out over time. This will likely be the part that is placed at the very base of your restoration hence the most important to getting a good seal at the tooth interface. You will find it is very difficult to squeeze cold composite out of a compule so gen...