When it comes to maintaining your oral health and shareable smile, you sometimes need help. Fortunately today, restorative dentistry provides several ways to keep you looking your finest and ensure your quality of life is and remains the best it can be.

Two restorative solutions, in particular, chosen by patients are crowns and dentures. For either of these, ensuring the right fit is imperative, and that fit all starts with your dentist obtaining accurate dental impressions.

While traditional methods are still in use today, advancements in technology are improving the experience, ushering in the ability to obtain digital impressions with less mess and discomfort and with more accuracy.

What are Dental Impressions?

If you’ve ever had a crown, bridge, or full dentures, you have already gone through the process of creating dental impressions.

Dental impressions are imprints taken of your teeth, gums, and any surrounding oral structures inside your mouth. These imprints are then used to create a model or cast of the layout of your mouth, sharing valuable information with your dentist, such as how your dental arches fit together. They also show the relationship and size of the teeth and gums.

Dentists use these models or casts to create dental crowns and dentures, as well as other oral appliances such as bridges, implants, customized teeth whitening trays, night guards, and mouth guards.

The impressions need to be precise and accurate because they are the reason your new restoration will fit well and be as exact as possible.

Traditionally, dental impressions are obtained with the use of a gooey, putty-like material oozed onto U-shaped trays. Once full and thick, these U-shaped trays are inserted inside the patient’s mouth. The patient then bites down gently, holding the tray in place for 2-5 minutes while the material hardens.

The dentist will then carefully remove the tray. You may need to go through this process a few times for accuracy or to capture both the top and bottom rows of teeth. Finally, though, with a successful impression in the material, your dentist will be able to use it to create a model of your mouth or specific tooth.

The process itself is often messy and uncomfortable. With the arrival of new technology, however, that discomfort is going away and creating a more pleasant experience when it comes to necessary restorations.

New Technology and Digital Impressions

With advancing technology, it was only a matter of time until a better process became available for obtaining these dental impressions. That advancement is in the form of convenient, accurate digital scans or impressions that are proving to be highly beneficial.

Here at Bateson Dentistry, we now offer our patients this new technology and a more comfortable experience when it comes to obtaining impressions.

With the use of the 3Shape Trios Scanner, a lightweight, handheld, wireless intraoral digital scanner shaped much like a wand, we can capture digital images of our patient’s teeth and gums. These images are then compiled in the specialized computer software accompanying the scanner.

This impressive technology not only provides a quicker process but creates numerous images that shorten the time required to efficiently design and deliver your restorations, including crowns and dentures.

Here’s how it works. Once Dr. Bateson has prepared the teeth requiring restoration, she moves the wand over the chosen areas inside your mouth, taking digital images of your teeth, gums, and mouth structures. Within minutes, she has everything needed to design and provide you with accurate, well-fitting restorations.

Benefits of Digital Impressions

There are numerous benefits to using new technology for obtaining digital impressions today. Several of these include:

• Patient experience is more convenient, comfortable, and less time-consuming.
• Less distortion of the impression occurs, which helps ensure higher accuracy and better fitting restorations.
• The overall process reaches completion in less time.
• There is a lower chance of requiring additional dental appointments.
• It decreases the messiness of trays and the putty-like material.
• Scanning reduces the risk of pulling out loose or damaged teeth.
• Once complete, the process requires only minimal clean-up.

Overall, with this new dental technology, dentists can obtain a highly accurate cast or model of your teeth in less time.

In addition, digital impressions are placed in a patient’s file, making them available if ever they should need another restoration measure or repair. This filing saves the patient time and expense, as well as creates a more pleasant dental experience in the future.

Dental impressions continue to be an essential part of treatments today. Without them, dentists couldn’t develop customized dental restorations to meet the wide array of patients’ needs. Bateson Dentistry is proud to offer this innovative technology to patients for increased accuracy and comfort every day.

Contact Bateson Dentistry Today for Your Dental Restoration Needs

By providing the latest technology today, including digital impressions with the 3Shape Trios Scanner, Dr. Angela Bateson and her team at Bateson Dentistry can provide patients with the best care and experience, making dental exams more efficient, comfortable, and less time-consuming. Contact us today to see how else we can help meet all your dental needs.