The techniques and practices of any craft change over time, and staying up to date with them is a priority at our dentist in Aberdeenshire. Let's look at some of the new services we provide to our wonderful local community.
3D scanning
3D scanning may not have been designed with dentistry in mind, but it has turned out to be incredibly useful at our clinic. Much in the same way as x-rays made diagnostics and treatment planning easier, so has 3D scanning by providing a manipulatable multidimensional perspective of our patients’ teeth.
What's even better is that scanning can be done within a few minutes with an intraoral wand, largely ending the need for dental moulds, which had a significant curing time and were far harder to transport without risking warping and distortion.
In-clinic design
Computer design is an umbrella term that we use to describe a whole suite of software; some of it is used to design prosthetics whereas, for other procedures, we upload patients' 3-dimensional scans into the software. This allows us to overlay the scans with x-rays when predicting a good location for dental implants or designing bridges and crowns that have to interact with very low tolerance to other tooth surfaces.
This has minimised the need to fit and refit prosthetics, saving everybody's time and giving us the confidence to know that the dimensions of a prosthetic are spot-on. We can now even check how the teeth will mesh together after a new installation.
In-clinic manufacturing
At our dentist in Aberdeenshire, we carry out in-clinic manufacturing using a CEREC CNC milling machine, a low-vibration dustless application that lets us make many of the prosthetics. Previously, we would have relied on third parties to manufacture prosthetics on-site. Our milling machine was particularly useful during the pandemic disruption, as it allowed us to continue serving our community when many other milling businesses that were not classified as vital workers could not operate.
The milling machine gives us control over not only the geometry of the prosthetics we produce but also their translucency and shade, allowing us to match our patients’ enamel and create natural-looking restorations.
Impact on treatments
Our continued investment in including these new technologies in our clinic along with the necessary training to get the most out of them has had a significant effect on a whole range of treatments, from veneers and crowns to even fillings. We can now consider the on-site production of inlays and onlays as an alternative to traditional amalgam solutions, which has also reduced the number of multiple appointments required for our patients too.
Joining our clinic
If you are looking for a local dentist in Aberdeenshire who has a long history of serving a wonderful community, puts your dental needs first and is continually inventing and reinventing themselves to meet your standards in a dependable way, look no further. At Oldmeldrum Dental, we are currently accepting new patients at the surgery, and we would be happy to hear from you.