21st Century CAD-CAM Dentistry.

Ceramic Reconstruction-An Alternative to a crown
Have you been told you need a crown?
When older fillings break down, many dentists recommend crowns for stronger protection of teeth.
Crowns traditionally require a mould made of synthetic rubber that sets inside your mouth, and then a temporary plastic crown covers your tooth for a few weeks. Crowns are traditionally made out of gold covered by porcelain, and often require a foundation, which adds to the overall cost of having a crown.
All this treatment takes about three weeks.
But now there's a better way, with a new technique called single-visit ceramic reconstructions, or CEREC® for short.
This technology was first developed in Switzerland in 1987, and I have been using it since 1999.
So what's so different about CEREC®?
The main advantage for many people will be time—the CAD/CAM CEREC® system will reconstruct your tooth in less than two hours from start to finish.
Another bonus is that no impression is required. The system relies on a sophisticated infra-red scanning camera that takes a snapshot inside your mouth and creates a virtual tooth inside a specialised computer, so you never have a mouth full of rubber.
Your new tooth is then milled from a dental bio-ceramic produced especially for CEREC® reconstructions.
It's the dental porcelain which CEREC uses which is the real secret of the system: unlike traditional porcelain or gold, it expands and contracts with your living tooth structure. This means that hot drinks or ice-cream don't create temperature shocks for the tooth like traditional materials such as silver or plastic. This ability to mimic nature also means that the ceramic feels just like your own tooth. Because it is porcelain, with no gold metal, it also looks like your own tooth—something many patients find important today.
This one-visit treatment is available for most dental reconstructions where crowns used to be prescribed. I can also create lifelike and durable porcelain veneers for worn front teeth. With the benefits of CEREC®, I only prescribe tooth coloured crowns, and almost all are performed in a single dental visit.