Breaking Material Boundaries
The rapid innovation of dental materials creates new possibilities for treatment, results in easier workflows for clinicians, and improves outcomes for patients. But just how far have things progressed, and what new materials are making an impact on dental practices?
Breaking Material Boundaries | Image by Kristen Morabito / MJH Life Sciences Using AI
The practice of clinical dentistry employs a wide array of materials. Just about every procedure requires at least one specialized formulation, and while one product might be accomplishing the task at hand, this doesn’t mean something more effective isn’t in development or already available.
Even as innovative technologies create new ways of diagnosing and treating patients, this often simply means switching from using one type of dental material to another. So while practices using intraoral scanners are likely capturing fewer impressions with physical materials, the act of restoring a tooth will require some material to be affixed in the mouth.
Dental material innovations take many forms, but the end goal is to create something that looks and functions as much like the material it is replacing as possible, and every generation of dental materials gets closer to that objective. Today many material options are designed to both mimic natural esthetics and to provide patients with added protection from recurrent decay. To showcase these innovations, we spoke with a number of clinicians, who shared their thoughts on the types of products making a huge impact in their practices and for their patients.
