International Journal of Esthetic Dentistry最新文献

The accurate determination of tooth shade and its reproduction in modern restorations is often an arduous challenge in daily dental practice. The lack of objective methodologies in dental color estimation can make the work of dentists and dental technicians even more complex and frustrating. The purpose of the present article is to suggest shared clinical and laboratory workflows for digital image standardization to achieve an easy optical integration for posterior indirect composite restorations.

Background and aim: Dental implant patients are frequently required to undergo a second-stage/uncovery procedure to expose the implant fixture. The aim of the present prospective study was to evaluate the clinical outcomes of the vestibular split rolling flap (VSRF) versus the double door mucoperiosteal flap (DDMF) techniques at adjacent posterior implant sites during the second-stage procedure.

Materials and methods: A total of 44 uncovered posterior dental implants in 10 healthy patients were treated at the second stage. All the mesial implants were assigned to the VSRF technique (group A) and the distal implants to the DDMF technique (group B). Soft tissue measurements were performed as vestibular keratinized mucosal width (KMW) and vestibular mucosal thickness (MT) over a period of 1 year, assessed at four different intervals.

Results: Healing was uneventful at all sites. There were no patient dropouts in the entire study time frame. The clinical comparison of the adjacent implants showed overall higher MT measurements at 12 months for group A (2.5 ± 0.2 mm) compared with group B (1.00 ± 0.3 mm), and for KMW measurements for group A (2.5 ± 0.2 mm) compared with group B (2.0 ± 0.3 mm).

Conclusions: The VSRF technique described in the present article is a reliable method for performing an implant uncovery. If the technique is applied according to the indication and with a minimally invasive protocol, it is preferable to other conventional exposure techniques due to its ability to provide enhanced soft tissue volume around the implant, which can in turn benefit the health, esthetics, function, and long-term stability of the peri-implant tissue.

Aim: The purpose of the present retrospective case series was to introduce a minimally invasive two-stage flapless crown lengthening procedure where a gingivectomy was avoided or minimized by reducing the bone height through a tunneling technique.

Materials and method: Ten patients (median age 46.6 years, range 26.9 to 71.6 years) were included in the study. The indications for performing a crown lengthening procedure were esthetically short clinical crowns (n = 5), asymmetry of the gingival margin level (n = 2), and both esthetically short clinical crowns and asymmetry of the gingival margin level (n = 3). All the patients presented a thick gingival phenotype, and the mean number of operated teeth per patient was 3.7 (range 2 to 8 teeth). Three patients underwent an additional gingivectomy 6 weeks after the crown lengthening procedure.

Results: The esthetic and functional outcome of the treatments fulfilled the patients' and dentist's expectations.

Conclusion: A minimally invasive two-stage crown lengthening procedure applying a tunneling technique has the potential to achieve predictable esthetic outcomes without an open-flap approach and an additional gingivectomy. However, prospective clinical studies are needed to validate this technique.

Recent literature has shown that tooth extraction in the esthetic zone is followed by enormous amounts of ridge reduction caused by bone and soft tissue remodeling. The clinical implication of this, among other factors that warrant discussion, is the limitations regarding immediate implant placement in the esthetic zone. On the other hand, staged approaches - even those combined with alveolar ridge preservation techniques and/or alveolar ridge reconstruction - do not always show predictable results, so that esthetic compromises are quite common. Only under optimal conditions do the current literature and common consensus reports support the use of immediate implant placement to preserve the natural esthetic architecture of the former periodontal structures that had surrounded the extracted tooth. Absolutely mandatory, among other factors, are a sufficient bony compartment and an adequate soft tissue volume. The present article outlines a clinical methodology to reestablish the missing prerequisites for the immediate placement of implants, even in periodontally compromised and severely reduced situations, combining different approaches reasonably approved by the literature. Thus, the so-called socket rebuilding technique (SRT) is presented in this article to ensure esthetic results under challenging periodontal conditions.

Objective: The objective of the present study was to assess the progress and efficiency of at-home bleaching protocols with 10% carbamide peroxide using a new methodology based on dental photography.

Materials and methods: A 4-week overnight at-home bleaching protocol using whitening trays and 10% carbamide peroxide was performed on 52 patients. The tooth color was analyzed using standardized photographs taken every week for 4 weeks and at 4 months posttreatment. The values of the color evolution (ΔE00), L*, a*, and b* were also measured and used to assess the evolution of the chroma, luminosity, and hue using the CIEDE2000 formula. The statistical analyses were conducted at a significance level of P < 0.05 by means of a repeated measures analysis of variance (ANOVA).

Results: The tooth color changed the most, and thus the highest ΔE00 was observed, after the first week of treatment. The color continued to change but to a lesser degree during the following weeks. After 4 weeks, the treatment proved to be very effective. Four months after the end of treatment, a color relapse was observed, though it was hardly perceptible to the human eye. The luminosity (L') changed significantly between the beginning and the end of treatment, affecting the maxilla to a greater extent. The chroma evolution showed a high variance and a low relapse for both jaws. The hue was not affected significantly during the treatment and the stabilization.

Conclusions: Within the limitations of the present study, the authors were able to assess the progress and efficiency of at-home bleaching with 10% carbamide peroxide in terms of chroma, luminosity, and hue using a new methodology based on dental photography.

Clinical significance: This new method is effective and enables a reliable analysis of the evolution of a dental bleaching treatment, turning dental photo-graphy into an even more powerful tool for analysis and communication. It can also be used as a proof-of-concept, paving the way for further research on objective monitoring and evaluation of dental treatments using dental photography.

The conventional socket shield (SS) design extends from the mesiolabial to the distolabial line angle. C-shaped SS, L-shaped SS, and proximal SS designs have proximal extensions that help to maintain the hard and soft tissue in the interproximal areas. This is beneficial for implant sites adjacent to an existing implant or an edentulous space. The most common complication of the socket shield technique (SST) is internal shield exposure. Due to anatomical features such as a scalloped ridge shape and an oval socket shape of some teeth, the risk of complications such as internal shield exposure, inadvertent SS displacement, and fracture of the SS during implant insertion is greater in proximal shield areas. The present article describes guidelines for case selection for proximal shield extensions, along with SS preparation and the selection of implant and prosthetic components.

Closing a diastema with a direct composite restoration still represents a real challenge for clinicians, mainly due to the need to create a correct contact point and emergence profile at the cervical level. The present article describes a novel anterior direct composite restoration technique for closing diastemata and changing tooth shape. The proposed technique, called the Front Wing Technique (FWT), does away with the use of the traditional wax-up and silicone index-based procedures. To date, there has been no effective way to transfer the anatomy modeled in the wax to the interproximal cervical area of anterior restorations every time these areas need to be corrected or restored. Therefore, the FWT provides a new approach to freehand model the emergence profile without gap formation. The cases in this article demonstrate the closure of maxillary and mandibular incisal diastemata, with the rationale behind each clinical step of the FWT described. This technique should be considered an alternative approach for the direct composite restoration of anterior teeth, saving chair time and cost.

Objective: The present study aimed to evaluate the gender-based association of gingival exhibit with lip dimensions, intercommissural width (ICW), interdental smile line (ISL), and gingival smile line (GSL) in periodontally healthy patients.

Materials and methods: 120 patients aged between 20 and 40 years were divided equally into two groups based on gender. The parameters of lip length (LL) at rest and on smiling, ICW, and the intraoral parameters of gingival exhibit in ISL and GSL were measured on digitized photographs in the maxillary anterior teeth.

Results: The LL positions at rest and on smiling differed significantly: 23.50 ± 3.31 mm and 19.89 ± 1.91 mm, and 16.53 ± 2.94 mm and 13.91 ± 1.93 mm for males and females, respectively. The gingival exhibit of the interdental papillae in ISL was 3.01 ± 1.85 mm for males and 4.26 ± 1.85 mm for females, while the midfacial exhibit in GSL was 0.62 ± 1.01 mm for males and 1.24 ± 1.44 mm for females; both the differences were statistically significant.

Conclusion: The gender variability in LL, the interdental papillae exhibit in ISL, and the midfacial exhibit in GSL can provide constructive guidelines that can be implemented in the esthetic zone.