All in one visit with CEREC

New technologies are making our lives simpler and easier everyday and dentistry has certainly not been left behind. Thanks to a great new system called CEREC, you can now have a high-tech smile in a single visit.

In days gone by, you may have needed to visit the dentist two or three times to have a quality, white ceramic restoration. The dentist would need to take a special 'impression' to make a plaster model for the dental laboratory to generate an exact replica of your tooth in order to hand-make your porcelain restoration. The craftsmanship of the laboratory technician is highly regarded, but generally requires a minimum turn-around time of two weeks, leaving you to function with a temporary, generally plastic, restoration.

CEREC, instead, uses the latest Computer-Aided Design and Manufacture (CAD-CAM) techniques to give you perfect, white fillings, veneers or crowns, all in a single visit.

Here's how it works.

Once your dentist determines that CEREC is the correct course of treatment, your visit will begin by preparing the tooth. Any decay, if present, is removed, leaving as much as possible of your healthy tooth to support the CEREC restoration. Next, your dentist will use a specially designed electronic camera that makes a digital 3D model of your tooth in seconds.

Before	After
Before and after: CEREC restorations look and feel better than amalgam (above) and gold (below), and can be completed in a single appointment.
Before	After

You can then watch your dentist design your new restoration on a computer screen, right beside the dental chair using the 3D image created by the camera. The virtual filling is then transferred into reality, again using CEREC. A solid block of porcelain ceramic is inserted into the machine and automatically machined to exactly match this computer model.The perfect-fit restoration is completed and placed in your mouth with the whole process only taking around an hour! CEREC fillings are natural looking, smooth, white and hard-wearing, just like the enamel surface of the rest of your teeth. The ceramic material is biocompatible and is not affected by hot or cold.

Ask your dentist for more details about CEREC or Click here to find a CEREC dentist.