We are continually developing with advances in healthcare technology. Technology has helped dentists perform more accurate work, making intricate procedures possible and more successful.
Now dentists can design your new smile digitally so you can visualise your smile on the computer screen and can have more input with regards to what you want to change. This can all be done before the final restorations are made.
Even taking impressions/moulds of teeth with impression material will soon become a thing of the past as intra-oral scanners become more available. Dentists can now scan a patient’s teeth and send the image straight to the lab for the ceramist to construct the restoration.
Metal fillings and dental crowns were traditionally considered stronger than white ones, but now tooth coloured fillings and ceramic fillings & crowns have become increasingly stronger and natural-looking, reducing the need for the more unsightly metal ones.
Orthodontic treatment is also becoming more and more popular amongst adults as new more discrete and faster options become available. We’re now beginning to see a reverse in philosophies about cutting teeth to replace them with dental materials. We have realised that there is no stronger and more healthy material than what the body naturally creates. Over the years, we have found that removing large amounts of healthy tooth structure in order to place veneers, for example, puts teeth at severe risk of dying. “How is this relevant to Orthodontic treatment?”, you may ask. If you are interested in having a smile makeover by placing veneers on your teeth then ideally your teeth should be fairly straight in order to minimise the amount of preparation done by the dentist. If your teeth are crowded then more preparation would have to be done in order to make them appear straight when placing the veneers. Therefore, orthodontic treatment to align your teeth before veneer preparation is essential if your teeth are not in an ideal position, and the availability of fast and discreet orthodontic options nowadays has made this more feasible and convenient for our patients, enabling us to conserve more of their own teeth.