Case study: combining CAD/CAM and manual skills to achieve excellent results

Dental technician Aiham Farah and dentist Anas Aloum from the United Arab Emirates know what they are talking about when they say that dental professionals can refine their work with digital tools. A clever combination of CAD/CAM and manual skills allows them to achieve excellent restorative results. Their latest case study is a case in point.

Wanted: a functional and esthetic solution

In the given case, the well-rehearsed team from Abu Dhabi and Dubai provided a 29-year-old patient with a restoration that enabled her to smile with confidence again. The young female was dissatisfied with her upper anterior restorations and the appearance of the surrounding soft tissue (pink esthetics). She wished for a functional and esthetic solution.

Periodontitis and inadequate restorations

The challenges were easy to spot at the initial intraoral examination:

• severe discolouration
• devitalized teeth
• inadequate esthetics
• oversized crowns and veneers on the upper anteriors
• disharmonious smile line
• bulky composite restorations on the upper lateral incisors
• inadequate contouring of the underlying composite fillings
• clear signs of periodontitis affecting all four anterior teeth
  
  

Lithium disilicate: app identifies the correct tooth shade

In view of the intraoral findings, the operators decided to opt for a lithium disilicate glass-ceramic material for the restorative treatment. They chose to use CAD/CAM to speed up the manufacturing process and they took advantage of the free IPS e.max Shade Navigation App (SNA) to select the best material for the restoration. The app takes into account all the factors that influence the overall shade design of a restoration. The operator simply enters all the data required for the app to identify the most suitable IPS e.max material for the case at hand. In this way, a reliable solution can be found quickly and easily.

     
Aiham Farah (Dubai) and Anas Aloum (Abu Dhabi)