01 November 2019
According to Drs. Hugh Flax and Jack Ringer, they often find themselves unable to perform a permanent crown or bridge procedure on a patient who needs one. There are two common reasons for this predicament:
- Financial challenges prevent the patient from opting for a permanent restoration for a few years.
- A permanent restoration must be delayed for months because the patient is undergoing periodontal, endodontic or dental implant treatment.
When treating such patients, the dental profession’s primary option has been to use a provisional material to create a temporary restoration that is intended to last only days or a few weeks at most. This has clearly not been an adequate solution.
Drs. Flax and Ringer, both of whom have published numerous dental articles and are frequent speakers at dental conferences, each recently completed a clinical case involving a new material they say finally enables them to meet the needs of such patients. The new material is DMG’s LuxaCrown®️, a semi-permanent crown and bridge material that allows dentists to create chairside semi-permanent restorations with a longevity of up to five years.
In Dr. Flax’s case, a patient suffering from severe bone loss around two front teeth needed to have those teeth as well as two surrounding teeth removed and replaced by dental implants. The patient desired a durable, functional and esthetically pleasing bridge while she was healing from the procedure and waiting for the implants to be placed. LuxaCrown enabled Dr. Flax to create such a bridge chairside, which had the additional benefits of saving the patient time and money. The patient indicated that she was “ecstatic” with the improvement in function and esthetics provided by her bridge, and a follow-up appointment 45 days after the procedure revealed that the healing process of the tissue surrounding the bridge was proceeding successfully. According to Dr. Flax, such an outcome would not have been possible using a conventional crown and bridge material.
Dr. Ringer’s case involved a patient with a fractured crown on a front tooth who indicated she was leaving the next day for an overseas trip that would last several months. She needed not only a replacement crown that could be created immediately chairside, but one that would be functional, durable and esthetically pleasing for several months. While a reliable and durable solution would not have been feasible with a conventional temporary crown and bridge material, Dr. Ringer was able to create the crown that afternoon using LuxaCrown. When the patient returned to the practice several months later for a permanent crown placement, she reported that she was very pleased with the performance of her semi-permanent crown during her overseas trip.