Chairside - Glidewell Dental Labs

If you walk around just about any dental laboratory
today, you will no doubt find a large number of impressions
for which a vivid imagination is required
to find the margins of the preparations they are
supposed to have recorded. But finding the margins
(and the rest of the preparation) is exactly what we
are asking our technicians to do. Otherwise, our
full-coverage restorations will have only a slight
chance of fitting the preparations adequately. After all of
the new products that have been introduced recently to
make impression taking less treacherous, how is it that
many dentists still struggle with this procedure? Let’s review
the latest developments and I’ll give you my take
on them.
To stop the bleeding and retract the tissue, “all-in-one”
products such as Expasyl (Kerr Dental, Orange, CA),
Magic FoamCord ® (Coltene/Whaledent, Inc., Cuyahoga
Falls, OH), and GingiTrac (Centrix, Shelton, CT) are being
touted as being gentle, fast, and effective. These types
of products are supposed to relieve us from the drudgery
of having to utilize the dreaded retraction staple (namely,
the cord), but the sad fact is their performance leaves a
lot to be desired.
– ARTICLE by Michael B. Miller, DDS
– PHOTOS by Sharon Dowd
– CLINICAL PHOTOS by Michael DiTolla, DDS, FAGD
Impression taking
Is it a lost art?
“I learned a long
time ago that paying
attention to the
soft tissue before
prepping subgingivally
is the single most
important aspect of
impression taking.”
Impression Taking — Is It a Lost Art?59