[Advancements in dental preparation technique (literature review)]

This paper has reviewed the literature on the methods of cavity preparation. The different methods are summarised in Table 1. Nowadays rotary instruments are accepted as standard for cavity preparation. The limitation of using a rotary instrument is the iatrogenic damage to adjacent teeth. Therefore some of the hand instruments remained an essential part of quality restorative dentistry. In order to reduce iatrogenic injury oscillating instruments had been developed. The oscillating instruments change the rotary movement into an oscillating movement and copy the shape of the working tip through an abrasive medium to the tooth surface. The abrasive medium is generally diamond. A new possibility in tooth preparation is the Er:YAG laser. It can be used for both cavity preparation and caries removal. The chemo-mechanical caries removal means the selective chemical softening is followed by the mechanical removing of carious dentin.