The Importance of Temporaries…the Blueprint for a Great Smile! By Laurence A Langer, DDS

Online, October 21, 2013 (Newswire.com) - "But doc, they are only temporaries…" I have heard patient say this to me all the time. "Why are you spending so much time on them?", or "why is there an additional charge for them?" The answer is, your temporaries are the most important step in fabricating your new and final restorations. Whether it is full mouth reconstruction, or just a single anterior tooth, all the work that goes into making the temporary will help us determine color, shape, length/wide, correct phonetics, bite, and all the other necessary determining factors to develop the perfect smile for you. Let's start from the beginning. A patient comes in and wants to have a more youthful smile. Her teeth have wear, there is different levels of tissue height, and the teeth are too dark and are different colors. Ultimately we want bright, longer teeth, with symmetry from the midline to right and left sides.

So, where do we begin…we start with impressions and mounted models. Modifications are made in the stone, so as to enable the technician (or myself) to add wax and create perfect and ideal form. Any changes necessary in the gum position is done as well.

This now gives us a clear picture of what the final restorations will look like, and how what we need to do both surgically (crown lengthen and push the gum higher) and how much tooth structure we need to remove. From these models we can fabricate putty matrices, to help ascertain that we have removed enough tooth, and to make our provisional.

Once the patient has approved the wax up, we can do a "trial run". We may use the matrix we have fabricated from our wax-up, use to flowable composite, fill the matrix, and place it over the unprepared teeth. Now we can transfer our wax up directly to the mouth, without having touched any teeth, and get a good feel as to how everything is going to look prior to starting the case.

We are now ready to prepare teeth, take impressions, photos, shades, and make our provisional's..the provisional's will look just like our waxup. We can modify anything at this point, by addingor removing material. Once both the patient and I agree that all looks good, we will take an impression of the temporaries, and the lab will use this as its "blueprint" to create the final restorations.

I would like to thank Jason Kim from JK Dental Aesthetic Lab, along with his amazing staff. Team work and communications are the keys for success. For more info visit us online at http://www.drlangerdds.com/

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