Single step approach to make diagnostic impressions of both the arches and face bow transfer: a novel technique

Mounting the maxillary and mandibular dentulous casts for Diagnostic purpose requires many steps (including making maxillary and mandibular impressions, face-bow transfer, and bite registration) or many appointments. A simple new technique of doing all of this together without compromising on the accuracy can save time over the conventional mounting procedure.

To compare the accuracy of a new technique of a single-step diagnostic mounting procedure with that of the conventional diagnostic mounting procedure.

Ten dentulous patients with the full complement of teeth and without any history of temporomandibular disorder and orthodontic treatment were selected for this study. A detachable metal triple tray to replace the fork part of the face bow fork that further could be attached to face bow was fabricated. Dual-arch impressions and face-bow transfer were made in these subjects using this modified triple tray. These mountings were compared with the ones done with the conventional mounting procedure. Five linear measurements (using stable reference points on the articulator and the cast) were made and the values obtained by both the methods were compared.

The Student's 't' test for statistical analysis was used in this study.

The measurement values obtained by the single-step method were almost similar to the ones obtained by the conventional method. The various mean measurements for the single step and conventional methods were 37.7 ± 6.8 and 38.5 ± 6.5 mm; 70.0 ± 4.4 and 70.1 ± 4.2 mm; 57.0 ± 4.9 and 57.3 ± 4.2 mm; 71.3 ± 4.5 and 71.0 ± 4.6 mm; and 58.7 ± 2.5 and 58.3 ± 2.3 mm; respectively. The differences between the values obtained by the conventional and single-step methods were not statistically significant.

The single-step procedure of diagnostic mounting can be used as an alternative to the conventional method, without compromising the quality of mounting.