We’ve been talking a lot about our CEREC lately both in the office and on Facebook. CEREC is an acronym for Chairside Economical Restoration of Esthetic Ceramics or CEramic REConstruction. This two part system has revolutionized crowns and bridges in our office. Just this week, we had a technician out to perform some routine service our milling unit. He told us we had over 49,000 minutes on this machine. In 11 years, that’s a lot of run time!
So what does a CEREC mean for you as a patient?
The biggest advantage of the CEREC is the time savings. We can make a crown or bridge in one appointment, compared to a lab-created crown that requires two visits at least two weeks apart. One ninety minute appointment is all it takes from start to finish to own a strong and beautiful crown. You only come to our office once for the crown – that means one visit, one day with time off work, not two. The time savings for us includes confirming one appointment, cleaning one room and not recementing crowns between temporary and final crown visits. It may not sound like a whole lot of time savings for us, but it is.
No more gooey impressions! Before, we would take impressions with the gooey impression material two times during a crown or bridge prep and send them off to the dental lab to create the crown or bridge for us. Now, impressions are made digitally with this machine, the CEREC acquisition unit. Not only can we take digital impressions for crowns and bridges with this machine – we can take impressions for dental implants, Invisalign treatment plans, night guards or splints, surgical guides, and even whitening kits. Digital impressions are so much easier and much more precise than the old style gooey impressions. Plus, we keep the scanned file in the patient’s digital chart, so we are able to refer back to it if it’s ever needed.
Another cool bonus about the CEREC is you, as a patient, can watch your new crown being made from start to finish. The impression and design process is done right in the operatory with you. Once we send the file to the milling unit, you can watch the tooth progress. This isn’t top secret science, we want you to be involved! There aren’t many times a person can say they watched a tooth, especially their own, being created right before their eyes.
With no lab bills, we are able to keep our crown prices lower and much more competitive than we would with rising lab fees. Being able to give our patients quality care with competitive fees is extremely important to us.
We can also keep a close eye on quality control. Sometimes we would get a crown back from the lab and it wouldn’t fit well or it was the wrong shade. In those instances, it usually meant taking impressions again and sending the crown back to the lab. It also usually meant having the patient come back to our office again in another two weeks. Not so anymore. If something is wrong with the crown, we can quickly mill another one. We make sure every crown is made to our extremely high standards. We even use our skills to custom shade the crowns to get the perfect shade for each unique patient.
I’d be lying if I told you we don’t like playing with the technology, too. It gives us great satisfaction to know we have created something strong, beautiful and durable from start to finish right here inside our office. Being able to learn and improve upon all aspects of the crown process from creation to completion, we have honed our skills over the past eleven years and can produce a consistent, high-quality product with extremely high customer satisfaction. We are pretty proud of that fact.
In hindsight, we are extremely happy we invested in our CEREC many years ago. We have made some updates with software and cameras over the years and have taken care of it with routine maintenance and service. We have loved this machine and our patients love it too. With this machine, we are utilizing the latest and best technology to ensure our patients are receiving the best care available. Insist on the best – you’re worth it!
Written and submitted by Stephanie Jugovich, staff member at Pike Lake Dental Center