Dear Restoratives & Cosmetics Insider,
Zirconia received satisfactory marks in a big review of systematic reviews of the restorative material. The new analysis included 16 years of published reviews with 128 individual primary studies and approximately 10,000 total zirconia restorations.
The authors of the new qualitative review concluded zirconia had "satisfactory results" due to shortcomings that were usually easily fixable and did not affect restoration functionality. Read more about where zirconia shines and falls short in our Insider Exclusive.
Also new in the Restoratives & Cosmetics Community, a chest x-ray helped identify a 9.5-mm dental crown discovered in the lung of an 81-year-old man admitted to the hospital for meningitis. The aspirated crown is a reminder for dentists to perform careful creation, placement, maintenance, and preservation of prosthetic crowns in elderly patients, according to the authors of the case report.
In other news, it turns out the smiles of stars differ quite a bit from the grins of us regular folk. Photos of smiling celebrities showed numerous deviations from the smiles of Spanish dental students in one recent study. The findings may help you create more satisfying smiles for patients.
Are your patients turning to TikTok for dental advice? The video-sharing social network has become a hotspot for viral, do-it-yourself dental trends, including shaving down teeth with nail files and using strong adhesive bonding glue to accessorize teeth. Dental professionals should be aware of these risky hacks and discuss them with patients, one dentist said.
While many businesses struggled during the COVID-19 pandemic, office closures may actually have been a boon for cosmetic dentistry. Videoconferencing pushed more people to notice the flaws in their teeth, leading to a surge in demand for smile makeovers in a trend dubbed the "Zoom boom."
Finally, you don't want to miss a couple of articles on how CAD/CAM workflows can help improve patient outcomes. In one article, assistant professor Dr. Steven Gold shares how dentists can use CAD/CAM tools to practice more precise dentistry and better save teeth. In another, researchers describe their novel use of CAD/CAM technology to bring a smile to a patient with primordial dwarfism.
