CEREC

A patient undergoing dental restoration with a Cincinnati-area cosmetic dentist usually needs several visits. On the first visit the dentist usually prepares the teeth and makes a mold from which the restorations such as crowns, dentures, or veneers are to be fabricated. Between appointments the patient has to wear a temporary crown while the final restoration is fabricated by the laboratory. On the second visit the dentist places the restoration in the patient’s mouth and adjusts it to feel natural.

The temporary restoration can often feel awkward and can affect eating, speaking, and sleeping. It also involves inconvenient traveling back and forth to the dentist’s office. The skill of the laboratory technician can also affect the final results including ill-fitting crowns that allow debris between teeth or between the crown and the gum.

New technologies make the manufacturing of all-ceramic dental restorations possible in a single visit. The most frequently employed equipment for such a process is the CEREC, a computer-aided design/computer-aided manufacturing machine that creates custom dental restorations easily. In the past, Cincinnati dentists have had a limited number of materials from which they could craft restorative prosthetics--usually gold, amalgam and composite materials that could withstand the wear and tear of daily use. CEREC uses highly durable ceramic materials that deliver the look of all natural teeth to craft inlays, onlays, crowns and veneers. This means a patient can have their restoration completed in a single visit.

CEREC technology is used to record the anatomical features of the tooth and surrounding areas, and the dentist completes the custom design by using images of their patient’s teeth and gums in conjunction with the software. The machinery then makes the custom restoration which is an exact replica of that designed in the software by the dentist. This means that a patient getting a crown will not have to wear the temporary for a week or more before returning for their permanent crown. They will not suffer the discomfort and possible bacterial buildup, but instead they will wait a few minutes comfortably in their dentist’s office as their crown is made.

CEREC technology is not available at every Cincinnati-area dental practice, and patients may need to visit a new dentist to have their dental restorations completed with this method.