Oman Wellness: Digital dentistry is helping patients in Oman

Lifestyle Saturday 13/January/2018 19:46 PM
By: Times News Service
Oman Wellness: Digital dentistry is helping patients in Oman

Computer-aided drawing and manufacturing which is also popularly known as CAD/CAM, is revolutionising the field of digital dentistry and is helping patients here in Oman with reduced treatment time making the dreaded chair time more manageable. Medical field is underdoing a major revamp in this age of digital revolution, with ground-breaking technologies in all aspect in the medical world. Dentistry is no exception to this technological overhaul and race is on to incorporate this to our daily practice.

How is CAD/CAM used in dentistry?
A patient using digital dental treatment can now complete the treatment in one visit as opposed to the traditional multi-visit process that would be spanned over a few weeks. This is thanks to CEREC, a state-of-the-art technology pioneered by Dentsply Sirona that is currently revolutionising the field of dentistry empowering the dentists to deliver better, safer, and faster dental care. CEREC stands for Chairside Economical Restoration of Esthetic Ceramics. What it means is now using CEREC’s CAD/CAM technology, your dentist can now take digital impression of your teeth using computer assisted scanning technology, design a single tooth or multiple teeth, make crown, implants or bridges right in front of your eyes and all this within matter of an hour or two. What’s more is that it’s much healthier treatment option as there are no temporary restorations involved. From the time CEREC was launched, it has successfully restored millions of teeth across the globe, providing swift treatment for some of the most common dental problems such as decayed or chipped teeth. Patients globally prefer CEREC as it is time efficient, providing high quality and durable restorations, giving patients with even more reasons to smile.

How does a patient benefit from this?
One of the biggest advantages that CEREC has brought for us is by giving us to work with greater precision. It allows us to scan and create an image of your tooth to reconstruct with unmatched precision and speed. Dentists now prepare on a large screen, and this thereby makes it easy for them to see details that they couldn’t see with a traditional impression.
Dentists can now view the scan before actually designing of the actual tooth and ensure the margins and the bite precisely.
Secondly, reduced chair-time or treatment time. Since the scanning, 3D image generation and printing are all connected to Wi Fi, it gives dentist to finish our work at lighting speed. Imagine walking into the clinic and getting a new crown, veneer, bridge, or inlay ready and fixed within a matter of hours. No multiple visits required, and no lab work required. Traditionally getting a crown or an implant would take something like 8-10 days to sometimes even two weeks for a lab to complete once they receive the impression from the dentist.
Patients now can be even more involved in their treatment plan than ever before. 3D imaging and designing allows your dentist to show exactly how they would design the natural contours and match the colour to your other teeth to give it a more natural finishing.
Lastly what is most exciting for most of the patients is the comfort of knowing that the dentist will not be taking any impressions using the dreaded large, gooey impression trays. Not only are the digital scanners much more comfortable but also gives the dentist the most accurate impression of the tooth.

Treatments offered by CEREC
Surprisingly most patients coming into our clinic don’t even know the full potential that CEREC can bring into their dental treatment. CEREC can be used for several cases for example for crowns — this is probably the only treatment most people would associate CEREC with. However, you will be amazed to know that CEREC technology can be used for dental implants, bridges, veneers, on-lays, in-lays, overlays to name a few along with crowns. Among these above-mentioned treatments, usually a crown would take about 2 hours from start to finish as it requires, tooth preparation, that is cutting of the teeth before covering it up with the CEREC crown, while rest of them would take just an hour in the clinic. Someone once said, “time is money”, if this is something that you truly believe then CEREC can help you save a lot of money.
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Dr Puneet Soratur is Senior Dental Surgeon at Wassan Dental Specialty Centre
Visit: wassandental.com