Modern Day Material Selection

In our mission as restorative dentists, we often come across the same series of questions.

When reconstructing, what is either deficient or absent in our patients smiles? Is the restoration of teeth with either direct or indirect materials?

How do we chose materials that are appropriate, that are going to optimize our success?

I think what we have to be careful of is that manufacturers certainly provide us with the latest, greatest promises of solutions for our dilemma. In the end, it really is dependent upon the engineering and the physiology of how these teeth relate in order to get predictability. And that is really what we need to be relying upon.

Manufacturers have done us some great favors or some great advances that will help to enhance our end-results.

The optical properties of some of the newer materials give us that opportunity to try to restore our patient’s smiles in a way that kind of harmonized with what nature would have provided initially. I think it is key to be able to choose materials that are with reputable manufactures that have some data, that have some longevity, that give us some predictability in the end-result. We certainly do not want to be caught in a situation where we are using something that is new and suddenly we are going in the wrong direction.

I think one of the people, particularly with indirect restorations, that we can rely on as a resource are our colleagues on the lab bench.

They have the opportunity to work with these different materials. And I think as we are providing restorative solutions for our patients that interaction, or that collaboration, with our colleagues on the lab bench is what is truly going to help insure beautiful results for our patients. I hope you find this helpful.

Photo by Javier Allegue Barros on Unsplash