Olivier Boujenah and Ingo Baresel shared insights about the power and scope of intraoral scanners in the latest 2023 Digital Excellence Series webinar, an educational program launched by Align Education.
In his talk, Olivier Boujenah described how fixed and removable prosthetics could be created in addition to fully customised restorations when treatment comes too late to save the natural tooth. Oliver explained how he works with four iTero intraoral scanners, plus his own lab, complete with 3D printing and milling facilities at his practice in Paris.
Highlighting the versatility of the iTero scanner, he described how he planned an extraction and bridge replacement for a patient for whom it was too late to conserve a tooth because the patient didn’t want an implant. He took a pre-treatment digital impression of the patient’s mouth and transferred it to his design service to create the new bridge using exocad software. The STL design file was then sent to the clinic’s in-house milling machine to make the new bridge. Oliver also used the scanner to help an elderly patient who had lost her bridge and wanted a rapid replacement. He explained, “I scanned her and designed a small partial prosthesis, which I then milled…and in less than 20 hours, the patient had new teeth.”
A more complex case involved a patient who had a large graft for a cavity at the front of her mouth. Oliver said, “My colleague, who performed the graft, asked me not to put a removable prosthesis onto this patient because it might damage the graft, but the patient told me that for personal reasons, she wanted her smile back immediately.” Oliver took a scan and, using exocad and Smile Design, created a splint to secure it. Oliver added, “The patient was happy because her smile was beautiful, and the surgeon was happy because the graft wasn’t touched, and I was happy because it was all digital.”
A key addition to the practice team
Ingo Baresel has scanned more than 6,000 patients since 2012 for restorative and Invisalign treatment and was equally passionate about the versatility of the iTero scanner and how he considers it to be the “heart of his practice.”
He opined that he now considers the iTero Element 5D Plus as “the perfect scanner” because it not only takes impressions but has so many other options, from a TimeLapse function to compare scans over time to the Invisalign Outcome Simulator Pro. Ingo highlighted how iTero’s NIRI (Near-infrared imaging) technology could be used as an aid in detection and showed examples of how NIRI is more accurate than traditional radiographs in detecting carious enamel, something described in a 2021 study that he contributed to, ‘Reflected Near Infrared Light versus Bitewing radiography for the Detection of Proximal Caries; a multicentre prospective clinical study conducted in private practices’ in the Journal of Dentistry. He also stressed that patients, particularly children, prefer a scan to bitewings, which they can find painful. Ingo added that early caries detection allows for more treatment options, including non-invasive methods.
His presentation also demonstrated the accuracy of using an iTero scanner compared with analogue impressions for fixed restorations. Ingo concluded, “The iTero scanner is not just an impression machine. It’s fast, it’s accurate, and you can use it for patient communications, for diagnostics, for restorative work. If I may, I would say that it’s the workhorse of our practice.”
To register for the webinar, ‘Unlocking the power of digital’ on June 28 at 7:30 CEST, visit iTero.
For more information visit www.iTero.com