Darin O'Bryan, D.D.S. As dentists we see a lot of patients that have fractures and old large fillings that need the occlusal surfaces covered but do not have pathology that involves the cervical area of the tooth. Now with conventional cementation methods, we would have to include those cervical areas to create a ferrule to allow our restorations to be retentive. Even if we were going to bond the final restoration, our temporary probably would not stay in place. The beauty of same day dentistry and good adhesive bonding is I don’t have to prepare this area at all to retain a final restoration or a temporary. That being said, we do have an esthetic challenge when trying to hide these high supragingival preparations. That is where the esthetic bevel comes into play.
The esthetic bevel is using a football diamond bur to make a long deep bevel on the facial aspect. This gives adequate thickness of material and a gentle gradation of ceramic from the margin, where there is adequate tooth structure to show through, to the occlusal which has no underlying tooth structure to affect the esthetics. This way there is a transition zone to help hide the change from ceramic to tooth structure.
Notice the higher angle of the bur. This is not used to flatten the cusp tip but to create a slope on the facial to make a transition zone of ceramic.
When this technique is used with a translucent material, in this case e.max HT, the material will naturally blend in to the facial aspect and the margin will disappear even if it is in the mid facial area, like in this case.
To see a more in depth discussion on this topic, follow this thread on cerecdoctors.com’s discussion forum:
