Yesterday I went to my dentist. About two weeks ago I had one of my crowns fall apart and had to have the thing replaced. My dentist, who studied at Loma Linda University,has a new piece of technology that I found to be quite impressive.
Normally, when you need this kind of procedure, the dentist cleans up the tooth and then creates a temporary crown, which is fitted into your tooth. There is a lot of messy stuff to make an impression. The dentist then takes the impression and sends it out to a dental lab - who from the form creates a thing that can be glued on to your teeth. Many of these are made out of gold because it is durable. A couple of weeks later you come back and have the new crown fitted and installed.
This new procedure, which is illustrated in the video, allows you to go to the dentist once. My dentist cleaned the tooth out a bit, took some electronic pictures and used software to model a something to fill the void. After that was done, he sent the image to what looks like a small cad-cam cutter, which, with two high speed drills, shapes a piece of porcelain into the replacement. The cutters are high speed, water cooled drills to machine the piece down to very close tolerances. It takes only a few minutes to create this. You then get back into the dental chair and the thing is fitted and adjusted. All in all the procedure is simpler for the patient and probably creates a replacement part that is more durable than the old type.
The new product is made by a company called Sirona and I think the actual system is called CEREC. Whatever, I think this is a wonderful advancement and am pleased that my dentist is one of the ground-breakers.
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