There are many occasions where it is good to embrace the Old Ways. Making a wood table or sourdough bread are examples. Dentistry is not one of them. If you have had a crown or night guard made you are familiar with a technique that involves a lot of goop and mess. That goop is an impression material that makes a pretty good replica of your teeth. It is mailed to a lab and poured in stone, and eventually a crown is made that hopefully fits you well. Not bad. Not great, but not bad. Luckily for our patients, at Boulder Dental Arts we pride ourselves on embracing new dental technology. Which is why we’re so excited about the new digital impression scanner.
Digital Dental Impressions
Thankfully, we now have digital impression techniques! This is my absolute favorite new thing in dentistry. Ok, it’s been developing for years but they’ve really got it dialed in now, and I’m so glad we have it at Boulder Dental Arts! At our North Boulder dentist office we can now take a video of your tooth, which converts into a digital file that is sent instantly to our lab. With your crown or night guard what you see is what you get, since it is digital it cannot distort! All those steps in the Old Way, steps where errors can happen, are gone! What does this mean to you? A crown in much less time, that fits beautifully with less adjustment, and with no goopy messes. The occasional need for remakes is reduced as well. I can’t say enough good things about this amazing dental technology!!!
A Note On Crowns Made In-Office:
A few offices use in-office milling machines to make crowns while you wait. We are keeping a very close eye on these mills, as they continue to improve. The dentists who use them save a whole lot of money because they don’t have to pay anyone to make their crown. Sure it saves you 4-5 days, but it more importantly saves them MONEY. For now we feel the quality of the crown isn’t there. Who do you want making your crown: a dedicated lab artisan who is not in a rush and has access to the very best equipment on the planet? Or a dental assistant working furiously out of a closet in the back of the office? With something as valuable as your new tooth ‘off the rack’ just isn’t good enough for us, or more importantly YOU.