Dental Practitioner Communication Analysis

Aim of dental team is to restore patient’s function and esthetic correctly in short time. Communication between dental technician and oral practitioner is most important to produce best possible results. If there was not enough communication done between oral practitioner and dental technician during treatment, it wastes time spent and delays the treatment period, which then makes patient unpleasant. As dental technician does not contact patient directly, patient’s information including conditions, expectations, desires and demands are all received from an oral practitioner. Since several communications are involved, it can increase the risk of misunderstanding. There are several communication tools helping communication between oral practitioner

To fabricate well-impressed diagnostic casts, oral practitioner should check the impressions before sending to laboratory. Cast should be neat and clear to identify the anatomical information of oral cavity. It is apparent that neat cast is helpful for planning the treatments as it exposes the patient’s information. The oral practitioner and technician can discuss and plan the treatments on the working cast by designing on cast. These penciled marks on the working cast can be used as a reference as the work progress. (Brown and Carr 2011)

It is important that cast has details of all the teeth especially for the fixed prosthodontics treatments. To fabricate most fitted, functional and esthetic crown, technician needs to know the exact space to determine the length and width of the crown. Also by copying the emergence profile of adjacent teeth, the crown will be look alike as other natural teeth.

Face-bow registration is used for mounting the maxillary and mandibular casts on the articulator in relation to the temporomandibular joints (TMJ). The angles should be transferred to articulator correctly for more accurate occusal contacts in centric and eccentric position. (Dias et al. 2013). This can affect the occusal plan and overall

Further more, it is involved in treatment planning. It will protect tooth tissue after preparing abutments and prevents any adjacent teeth movements. Also, it will be a trial restoration of definitive restoration. There are direct and indirect techniques for fabricating temporary restoration. A direct technique is when oral practitioner fabricates it. An indirect technique is when technician is involved in fabrication. When technician fabricates temporary restoration, it is usually the duplication of the diagnostic wax-up. The advantage of using duplicated temporary restoration is that it prevents producing a wrong definitive restoration. By trying the temporary restoration, it is able to check the function and esthetic. Patient is able to masticate/bite and speech without any distractions. Especially, patient is able to pronounce “f”, “s” and “v” clearly. (Arcidiacono et al. 2011) When patient is unhappy with shape, colour or function, technician can adjust the diagnostic wax-up referred from new information. As much as it is fitted to patients, there will be less work with definitive restoration. If temporary restoration haven’t checked and definitive restoration is produced, it has to be worked again from the diagnostic wax-up which then it is waste of material and time spent. Temporary restoration minimizes the aesthetic and function errors for definitive