Ceramic FDPs fare well in long-term study; is CBCT overused in orthodontics?

Dear DrBicuspid Member,

All-ceramic materials are firmly entrenched in prosthodontics, but until recently there was a gap in the research documenting their performance.

Now a new long-term study in the Journal of the American Dental Association (JADA) has established that, after 10 years, fixed dental prostheses (FDPs) made from monolithic lithium disilicate have better survival rates than other all-ceramic materials.

In other news, a California biotechnology company is commercializing a "smart bomb" peptide developed at the University of California Los Angeles designed to target S. mutans in the oral cavity and inhibit the development of caries. Read more.

And when it comes to dentistry, the adoption of cone-beam CT (CBCT) has so far been strongest in orthodontics. But a new literature review in the current JADA calls into question whether CBCT should be as widely used as it is in orthodontics today.