Simulated shape design. Helping patients decide their esthetic ideal

Esthetic care is changing dentistry from a need-based to a want-based practice. Patients are asking for esthetic treatment, and clinicians are retooling their practices to satisfy this need. One important part of providing esthetic dentistry is ensuring that the patient is as well-informed as possible about treatment outcomes.

This article describes a tool dentists can use to show patients potential tooth sizes, shapes and arrangements before carrying out treatment. Simulated shape design, or SSD, is a reversible method of demonstrating potential esthetic outcomes that involves creating trial restoration shapes and placing them over a patient's teeth. SSD is a simple technique that any dentist can perform. In essence, the technician makes new tooth shapes in wax, the dentist places these in the patient's mouth and the patient evaluates them. The dentist then makes modifications in the SSD, which he or she reports to the technician.

With the decisions of shape, arrangement and size made at chairside, the whole flow of esthetic treatment can be handled smoothly. Preparations can be cut more accurately to better support the restorative material; decisions can be made to open or not open the contacts; and shapes can be agreed on in the earliest stage of evaluation, then duplicated faithfully in the provisional and final restorations. There are no surprises for the patient, the dentist or the technician. Both the esthetic (smile design) and functional elements (anterior guidance) of the restoration can be checked with SSD. SSD could become the standard in determining whether or not to proceed with esthetic treatment.