School Of Dentistry Adds New Technology For Restorations

Within the past decade, digital dentistry has changed the way dentists and dental technicians create dental restorations— restoring the function, integrity and morphology of missing teeth and tooth structures with items such as bridges, crowns or even veneers. Part of that evolution included using CAD/CAM, which allows dentists to digitally design restorations with software and manufacture them with the use of mills. 

Our colleague was apart of the  team of administrators, faculty and technicians who identified what students needed to know to be successful in private practice and collaboratively worked to acquire this new technology for the school. 

“We are right up there with the latest technology,” Kim said. “As state of the art technology comes out, we are engaging with it, acquiring it and developing best practices to teach it. This new technology will allow our students to be on par with the vision of the future for dentistry.”

Kim says many current practitioners have yet to learn the latest advanced technology and most dentists are currently using pre-CAD/CAM methodology. Before digital dentistry, for patients needing restorations such as crowns or dentures,  dentists would make an impression in a patient’s mouth and then send the case to the lab for a technician to pour a plaster-type material into it, to create a working model. 

The use of CAD/CAM greatly diminishes the need for that laborious task and inserts digital technology. For example, if a dentist shaved down a patient’s tooth to make room for a crown, a dentist can now use a wand to scan the mouth instead of having to create the mold in the mouth manually. Now, an image is sent to a computer where a technician uses software to digitally build the tooth back up.

Once the creation is completed, the digital image file is then sent to a milling machine.The robotic arms of the machine will then mill or carve out the image it received. The mill can make dental implant crowns, inlays, onlays, veneers, partial crowns, crowns, bridges, hybrid bridges and digital complete dentures.