As a dentist, you are committed to the utmost care of your patients, especially when it comes to caring for their bridges and prosthetics. At times, the information available is often conflicting with various differing viewpoints. How do you ensure you are providing the best maintenance procedures so as to minimize wear and tear on your patients’ restorative work? There has been a outlining the pros and cons of different protective measures traditionally used by dentists. While more studies are needed, this information can help shed some light on which is the best maintenance procedure for your restorative dental work.
Glazing Versus Polishing When porcelain and ceramic were introduced as a dental restorative material, dentists turned to high-gloss glaze for smoothing out and sealing the porous surfaces of bridgework. There were numerous benefits to this such as the better function of chewing food, better oral hygiene practices, and an overall aesthetic improvement in the way light is reflected in the ceramic. Additionally, it takes longer for the ceramic bridge to wear down. After any readjustment procedure to correct opposing wear, the next step was and is always to reapply the glaze to retreat the rough surfaces and stave off any additional problems such as increased plaque build-up. Benefits of Polishing In recent decades, however, studies have shown that polishing after an adjustment may be just as effective and beneficial as high-gloss glazing and the enamel is not as easily affected. Depending on which restorative material is used in the bridge or prosthesis, whether ceramic, gold or other composites, the effectiveness of polishing will depend on many factors.
Hardness Factor The hardness of the tool or abrasive that is used in polishing will play a major role. Hardness is measured using the Moh’s scale which is also used in determining the hardness of gemstones. The larger the variance between the tool and the restorative material determines how abrasive the polisher is to the surface. Therefore, dentists must carefully consider which polisher to use so that the polishing is not too abrasive to the material. Less Steps, Better polishing procedurepolishing procedureResults Today’s dental polishers are designed to polish more efficiently, thus reducing the number of steps in the process. Furthermore, they produce a great quality shine. The different restorative materials are already taken into consideration so that possible damage is more easily avoided.
As a result, you get dental polishers that are effortless to use and that minimize restoration issues with the right fusion of physical and chemical properties of the various materials. This will save dentists a lot of time since they no longer have to keep sending the bridge out for re-glazing and the overall polishing procedure is much simpler.
