ZIRCONIA FROM THE DOLOMITES

PRETTAU ® – THE MOST EXPENSIVE. FOR THE PATIENTS YOU VALUE.

FOR THE PATIENTS YOU VALUE.

THE MOST EXPENSIVE.

New! Prettau ® 3 Dispersive ® zirconia with Gradual-Triplex-Technology: the high-quality zirconia is already provided with colour, translucency and flexural strength gradients during the production process.

Optimal Material And Colour Selection With The New Zirkonzahn

SHADE GUIDE

Monolithic Prettau ® Dispersive ® zirconia shade guides identical to the fi nal restoration.

Monolithic sample teeth available in the shape of:

1) Upper incisor

2) Upper incisor with minimal cutback for further characterisation with incisal materials

3) Lower incisor

4) Premolar

Innovative methods for the digital acquisition of the patient’s Natural Head Position and reference planes

orldwide events such as IDS, the International Dental Show held biennially in Cologne, Germany are always an opportunity of inspiration for dentists and dental technicians. We all return back from this event brimming with ideas and plans to improve our workflows. During IDS 2023, many solutions were presented, bringing more attention to cliniclaboratory communication and the optimisation of patient treatment through the digitisation of diagnostics and work processes.

WIn regard to digital diagnostics, Zirkonzahn, with headquarters and manufacturing sites located in South Tyrol, Italy, exhibited at their PlaneFinder® (developed in collaboration with MDT Udo Plaster, Germany) and the Face Hunter 3D facial scanner. These innovative tools allow the dentist to acquire the patient’s individual position of the maxilla and occlusal plane and create a 3D face scan. Such data are accurately transferred 1:1 into software and combined without loss of information, obtaining a 3D virtual reproduction of the patient’s physiognomy and oral situation (Figures 1-2). These solutions provide the restorative team in the clinic and laboratory with the ideal planning tools for high quality functional and aesthetic dental splints and rehabilitations.

Patient diagnostics - The PlaneSystem®

Dental technicians need precise data regarding each patient’s individual situation to develop personalised restorations in a virtual environment. The more precise the data, the better the achievable function and aesthetics of the design. In some situations, however, the technician will be unable to exploit the full potential of their CAD planning software. This may arise in the absence of information on how an available pair of casts relates to the rest of the body. In this framework, the PlaneSystem ® approach offers dental technicians and the dentist an alternative to conventional facebows to position the dental reconstruction correctly inside the jawbone and closely imitating the ideal natural situation, avoiding the development of asymmetric loads in the body.

The name PlaneSystem was selected to reflect the crucial role of the planes that the system identifies in the patient’s skull, including the absolute midline, the zero-degree reference plane and the individual occlusal plane (captured via the zero-degree reference plane). The system includes five elements: the PlaneFinder (Figure 3), for the detection of the patient’s physical planes; the PlanePositioner® (Figure 4); a specific mounting plate to position the models in the PS1 articulator (Figure 5), both physical and virtual. The PlaneSystem can also be used in combination with the PlaneAnalyser II, which records the patient’s specific movements of the mandible and the Face Hunter 3D facial scanner, to acquire a photo-realistic digitisation of the patient’s physiognomy.

With the PlaneSystem, it’s possible to capture the position of the maxilla in the skull and the occlusal plane in almost any individual. This may include cases of dentate, edentulous or prosthetically restored maxillae, as well as situations characterised by loss of dental hard tissue, bite position or single or multiple teeth. At the source of this process is one of the numerous amazing properties of the human body. All humans, when looking into a mirror, whether sitting down or standing in a stable position, will invariably, by engaging all natural aids (eyes, neck muscles, equilibrium organ), adjust their orientation in such a way that the head posture will intuitively be in balance with the body position and the sight axis parallel to the horizon. This position is almost identically reproducible at all times, offering a stable frame of reference for the PlaneSystem to record the position of each patient’s maxilla in the skull and to measure occlusal planes and related facial asymmetries. The same position is also known as the Natural Head Position (NHP).

The digital record of analogue data with the PlaneSystem

The recording of the patient’s position of the maxilla and the measuring of the individual occlusal plane starts out by placing the PlaneFinder on a level surface and aligning its upper arm horizontally. The extension of the arm provides a zero-degree reference plane, horizontally hemisecting the patient’s face at a zero-degree angle relative to the floor or base surface once the patient has reached the NHP. Since the NHP is reproducible, this zero-degree angle can be revisited any time, making the reference plane independent of any physical asymmetries.

The patient’s maxilla is placed upon a bite tray connected to the PlaneFinder. At this point, the midline of the patient’s NHP lies vertically in the middle of the bite: the individual position of the patient’s maxilla is then indexed with a bite registration material. The fact that the patient will always be able to return to this position, in which the midline has been determined as reference plane, guarantees the independent nature of said plane.