The Final Touch for Composites. Hands-On 2-day Course

The proper space management, contour, surface texture, final surface color, and polish can take average looking restorations and create an exceptional esthetic result. These steps are critical to the success of dental restorations weather it is composite or ceramics. The micro hand skills of “micro texture can also be taught in modeling wax, this can be a very useful exercise as it is easy to change wax. The Author practices his sculpting skills at least once a month in wax as he finds it is the fastest way to keep “trained”.

This is a lecture and hands on course that uses composite as a medium to design, form, contour, finish and polish anterior teeth. The lecture part of the course will cover the following topics (1) the step-by-step process of managing the design of 6 anterior teeth for a specific maxillary arch relationship. (2) Specific guidelines for esthetic tooth arrangement both in size and position are the key elements taught during this course. (3) The esthetics of the individual tooth i.e. the individual form and color characteristics of teeth and the inter-relationships between teeth. (4) Micro-esthetic elements of surface texture, and polish will be covered in a very systematic easily learnable format, with different materials composites, and wax. Dr. McLaren will also demonstrate how he layers composite by fabricating a full tooth with the crown and root, and the participants will do the same thing.

The demonstration and hands on part of the course will cover the armamentarium and the step-by-step process of these vital steps of form, texture, surface color, and polish. Part of the course will be taking 6 maxillary teeth that have been machined or printed as 6 oversized blocks of composite, and specifically determining the correct esthetic parameters of midline, tooth length and width, inter-tooth width relationships. Once these parameters have been determined the step-by-step process of creating these macro-dental esthetic relationships will be demonstrated and participants will do the same. Micro-esthetic parameters of form, contour, surface texture, and polish will gone over in great detail and participants will accomplish all these important skills.

Lecture Topics

– Space management and Shaping 6 anterior teeth in machined composite
– Contouring 6 anterior teeth in machined composite materials and techniques
– Texturizing 6 anterior teeth composite and materials and techniques
– Polishing 6 anterior teeth in composite materials and techniques
– Fabricating fully layered composite tooth with full root and finishing.

Learning Objectives

– Learn how to design and proper space management (i.e. correct macro-esthetics) for anterior teeth
– Learn the 6 levels of micro-esthetics of individual teeth and learn the step-by-step process of completing the 6 levels for composite materials, from shaping, texturizing, custom colorizing, and polishing composite materials.
– Learn color distribution in a natural tooth and how to layer it correctly doing a fully layered composite tooth with full root and finishing.