CAD-CAM: Com­put­er-aid­ed design and Com­put­er-aid­ed man­u­fac­tur­ing

Com­put­er aid­ed design includes all soft­ware and mod­el­ling tech­niques for design and vir­tu­al test­ing with the help of a com­put­er and dig­i­tal sim­u­la­tion tech­niques to both design and man­u­fac­ture prod­ucts.

Our clin­ic has a CEREC Omni­cam cam­era (Sirona) for intra­o­ral impres­sion cap­ture.

Dig­i­tal impres­sions do not com­plete­ly replace con­ven­tion­al impres­sions at this time. This impres­sion method rep­re­sents sig­nif­i­cant com­fort for the patient, as it replaces the con­ven­tion­al method with imprint tray and impres­sion mate­ri­al.

Dig­i­tal impres­sions car­ried out at the clin­ic are sent to our den­tal lab­o­ra­to­ry, where with the help of soft­ware, the restora­tion is vir­tu­al­ly cre­at­ed and trans­mit­ted to the pro­cess­ing unit, the CEREC MC XL, which cre­ates the pros­the­sis by milling.

It should be not­ed that no lab­o­ra­to­ry machine can yet replace a technician’s know-how in the aes­thet­ic ren­der­ing of ceram­ics. This is why we only use it for the pos­te­ri­or pros­the­sis after cos­met­ic ren­der­ing by the tech­ni­cian and as a rigid base frame, on which the tech­ni­cian will mount their ceram­ic veneer.

We are on the eve of a quite dif­fer­ent rev­o­lu­tion­ary dig­i­tal process that should arrive in our clin­ics in a cou­ple of years: the 3D print­er.

Cone Beam – CBCT

Since 2016 we are for­tu­nate to be equipped with a pow­er­ful tool for x-ray exam­i­na­tion of the max­il­la: the Kavo Pan Exam Plus 3D

Mid­way between panoram­ic x-ray and scan­ner, the cone beam has cre­at­ed a mini rev­o­lu­tion in the field of med­ical imag­ing. This device offers new oppor­tu­ni­ties in terms of den­tal exam­i­na­tion but is still lit­tle known to the pub­lic.

The cone beam (or CBCT: cone beam com­put­ed tomog­ra­phy) is a new dig­i­tal radi­ol­o­gy tech­nique. This device has the advan­tage of being more accu­rate than the den­tal panoram­ic x-ray with a sim­i­lar res­o­lu­tion, even greater than the scan­ner, with the pos­si­bil­i­ty of a 3D dig­i­tal recon­struc­tion.

Added advan­tage, the cone beam pro­vides more detailed guid­ance on the small bone struc­tures, which are often dif­fi­cult to view on a scan­ner. And con­verse­ly, it can scan in a sin­gle pass the entire vol­ume to be x-rayed, while also being less irra­di­at­ing. It also offers the pos­si­bil­i­ty of locat­ing the exam­i­na­tion area on the study area, there­by avoid­ing the unnec­es­sary irra­di­a­tion of oth­er parts of the skull.

CBCT appli­ca­tions are numer­ous: wis­dom teeth, frac­tures, infec­tions or cysts. It is the key instru­ment in pre-implant eval­u­a­tion. It enables more accu­rate bone vol­ume eval­u­a­tion and the posi­tion of del­i­cate anatom­i­cal struc­tures such as nerves and the max­il­lary sinus for implant place­ment.

It also has its lim­its; it can­not eval­u­ate soft tis­sue.

View pho­tos from the cam­era and the images it cap­tures…

In case of com­plete tooth loss, we sug­gest the All-on-Four treat­ment con­cept that brings back a last­ing, pleas­ant and imme­di­ate smile in just a few days.

This inno­v­a­tive sur­gi­cal tech­nique, enables the fix­a­tion of tem­po­rary full-pros­the­sis sup­port­ed by four implants. With no bone graft­ing, this treat­ment is faster and more eco­nom­i­cal. In gen­er­al, one oper­a­tion is all that is required, con­duct­ed under local anaes­the­sia or seda­tion. The per­ma­nent pros­the­sis is placed three months lat­er.

Cer­tain teeth may show patho­log­i­cal wear and tear. With­out prop­er treat­ment this process may evolve towards aes­thet­ic and func­tion­al loss.

A thor­ough exam­i­na­tion makes it pos­si­ble to under­stand the caus­es (brux­ism, stress, acid food, tics etc.) and offer ade­quate treat­ment from the first signs.

We favour the most con­ser­v­a­tive treat­ment pos­si­ble using inlays and porce­lain veneers and do our best to pre­serve as much den­tal tis­sue as pos­si­ble.

A case exam­ple to illus­trate the­se treat­ments