You are here

Jane D. Brewer

The Dark Side of All Ceramic Restorations

Lecture Description: 

While the marketplace overflows with all ceramic options for everything from intracoronal restorations to implant supported fixed complete dental prostheses, the appearance matching of a single or limited restoration in the “esthetic zone” remains frustrating. The plethora of currently available options has made the goal of an ideal restoration even more difficult because of the numerous choices and decisions that must be made based on individual tooth and patient variables. For example, shade-taking devices measure the color of natural teeth but are unable to accurately measure translucency. Therefore, practitioners use shade guides, industrial guidelines, digital images, and sketches on laboratory work authorizations. However, rejection rates ranging from 22-78% demonstrate that insufficient data is transmitted to the dental laboratory to produce even an acceptable restoration.

This presentation will address some of the many challenges in achieving an ideal all ceramic restoration – color, shade, and translucency; limitations of devices; choice of materials; advantages/disadvantages of translucent materials; identifying substrate problems; and materials /substrate coordination.

Objective: 

At the end of this lecture, participants should be able to:
• Define some of the factors in the “difficult” all ceramic case
• Recognize the limitations of ceramic materials and how to choose the best material
• Understand some of the problems in shade matching and what we need to know to make the best shade and translucency choices
• Identify substrate problems and how to coordinate substrate with the optical properties of ceramic restorative materials

About presenter: 

Dr. Brewer received her DDS, Certificate in Fixed Prosthodontics and MS Degree from the State University of New York, University at Buffalo, School of Dental Medicine. A career dental educator, she has spent half of her career in academia and half in private practice (prosthodontics). Her research interest is focused primarily in color analysis of ceramics and teeth. Active in a number of prosthodontic organizations, she served the American Academy of Fixed Prosthodontics as its 56th president and served on the Editorial Council of The Journal of Prosthetic Dentistry for 12 years (through the Academy of Prosthodontics). Dr. Brewer is currently Chair of the Department of Restorative Dentistry at the University at Buffalo School of Dental Medicine.