Why Is It More Popular To Scan for Crown & Bridge Than Removables?

The integration of digital technology in dentistry has completely transformed how dental professionals approach restorative procedures, making them more precise, efficient, and patient-friendly. Digital workflows, such as intraoral scanning, have become a natural fit for crown and bridge restorations, streamlining the process from start to finish. Intraoral scanners allow for highly accurate impressions without the need for messy traditional molds, improving patient comfort and reducing the margin for error. These advancements save time and enhance the overall quality of dental restorations, ensuring better outcomes for both patients and practitioners.

While digital tech for removable prosthetics continues to grow, it’s still more popular to scan for crown and bridge restorations, but why? Below, we’ll answer that question and more as we investigate the fit of crown and bridge restorations for digital workflow, the complexity of removables for scanners, and more.

The Ideal Fit of Crown and Bridge Restorations With Digital Workflows

Dental professionals everywhere have embraced digital solutions for crown and bridge restorations because they align perfectly with the requirements of these procedures. Crown and bridge workflows demand precision and efficiency, and intraoral scanning delivers both.

Scanners excel at capturing the fine details of prepared teeth and hard tissues, ensuring superior accuracy. For lab technicians, this means a highly predictable and reproducible process, leading to consistent results with minimal adjustments. Upon receiving the scan, labs can leverage Computer-Aided Design/Computer-Aided Manufacturing (CAD/CAM) and 3D printing technologies to design and fabricate restorations quickly and precisely.

This seamless process not only reduces chair time for clinicians and patients but also minimizes remakes. The lack of physical impressions also eliminates the risk of distortion, which can occur during manual handling. These clear advantages make digital scanning an indispensable tool in crown and bridge procedures.

Why Scanning for Removables Is a More Complex Task

While intraoral scanners offer precision, they are more accurate when it comes to hard tissue than soft tissue imaging, which makes scanning for prosthetics like removable dentures more challenging. Full and partial dentures require a highly detailed capture of the remaining hard tissue and the surrounding soft tissue, including movable structures like the frenums, vestibules, and other dynamic areas. Soft tissue plays a vital role in the fit and comfort of removable prosthetics.

Achieving a proper seal and stability in a denture, for example, relies on accurate impressions of how the tissue behaves under load or movement. In this area, conventional techniques like functional impressions excel in capturing such intricate information, which scanners are still working to replicate effectively.

These challenges become even more pronounced for edentulous patients (those without any remaining natural teeth), where the nuances of capturing the entire topography of the soft tissue are crucial. Although scanners are growing in sophistication, some removable cases still benefit significantly from traditional techniques or hybrid workflows.

Functional Impression Techniques Are Key for Removables

For removable prosthetics, the foundation of success lies in functional impression techniques. Denture stability hinges on understanding how soft tissue behaves under pressure, and this dynamic is difficult to replicate with purely digital methods. Traditional impressions allow dentists to record these critical movements manually.

For example, border molding in conventional impressions captures the natural extensions of the prosthetic borders as they move with the tissue, a key factor in achieving optimal retention. This remains a standard approach for many clinicians managing full denture cases or partials. However, hybrid workflows are also emerging as useful strategies for removables; these workflows involve the scanning of traditional impressions into digital formats. This amalgamation allows dental labs to leverage the precision of digital technology while retaining the functional benefits of conventional techniques.

The Growing Potential of Digital Workflows for Removables

While traditional methods currently dominate the removable market, the digital landscape for dentures, partials, and other removable devices is rapidly evolving. Advances in intraoral scanners, combined with additional tools like photogrammetry and facial scanning, are pushing the boundaries of what’s possible, which is exciting for dental professionals and dental labs everywhere.

While not all dental offices have the necessary equipment for completely digital removable workflows, more and more are investing in the future of digital. State-of-the-art tools like photogrammetry and facial scanning are becoming increasingly popular for their efficiency and patient comfort. Instead of requiring regular impressions and adjustments, dentists can scan, print, or mill removable devices in a precise and repeatable manner. As dentistry evolves, more cases are becoming suitable for digital workflows, and as such cases become more common, DDS Lab will remain available to support all dental offices through such technological transitions.

Supporting Practices Through Digital Integration

Dental labs serve as an indispensable partner in recommending the right workflows for specific cases and ensuring that practices have the resources to transition into digital methods when they see fit. If you manage or operate a dental office and are curious about exploring digital options for denture or partial cases, now is the time to start researching your options.

Many labs provide training, guidance, and practical tips to help practitioners succeed with digital impression techniques. DDS Lab is a reliable partner when it comes to digital impressions, with a wealth of experience and expert technicians ready to support your dental practice. When they operate in tandem, labs and practices can ensure that patients receive the high-quality results they deserve, regardless of whether traditional or digital methods are used.

Leveraging the Best of Both Worlds

Now, you should understand why it’s more popular to scan for crown and bridge restorations than for removables. While digital workflows offer incredible precision and efficiency for crowns and bridges, the same level of integration for removables is still catching up due to their more complex requirements. But with continuous advancements in digital capabilities, it’s clear that even the most intricate removable cases will benefit from fully digital workflows in the near future.

If you’d like to know more or are ready to explore digital impression techniques for removable prosthetics, don’t hesitate to reach out to a trusted lab partner like DDS Lab. We can walk dental professionals through which cases are ideal fits for scanning while providing insight into the best techniques for digital impressions. Together, we can pave the way for a future where every dental restoration combines the best of technology and craftsmanship.