The Digital Aesthetic Test Drive

The burgeoning public interest in techniques to enhance a smile has led to demand on clinicians that require important steps in the pre-treatment approval process. Digital dentistry provides a new level of planning and visualisation, improving clinical risk assessment and patient engagement. Dentists must acquire a sound understanding of aesthetic design parameters, including physiologic limitations, and must match patient expectations with clinical reality. Digital design offers flexibility not obtainable with the conventional analogue wax up. Multiple versions of a design can be viewed in a 2D or 3D simulation and accommodated efficiently in CAD software, with 3D printed models generated from each design. The ability to use a test drive or mock-up based on a 3D digital analysis and design, has created a new standard of care for treatment planning, providing an accurate and reversible preview before any definitive dentistry is done. It also places the responsibility for understanding biologic limitations of care on the general dentist, with the risk that digital planning may over-promise if not matched with underlying hard and soft tissue conditions. It improves interdisciplinary and laboratory communication and increases the predictability of the proposed treatment. The result is greater patient satisfaction and an improved informed consent process.