Diving Deeper Into Digital

Incorporating digital workflows into the college’s dental student curriculum and patient care is nothing new for UKCD. Faculty and staff have been focused on exposing students to available technology and emerging best practices for some time now. Even with the challenges brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic, the college continued to make gains throughout 2020 and into 2021.

“Our role here at the college is to try to incorporate and expose our students to digital dentistry as much as possible. We have been working on incorporating an increasing level of technology now for over five years,” shares UKCD Assistant Dean for Digital Dentistry Dr. Rodrigo Fuentealba.

Students begin their experience with digital tools their first year, using intraoral scanners in the simulation lab starting with a waxing course. Students scan their work and utilize Romexis Compare software to review how closely their wax up matches an “ideal” sample, within a faculty-selected range of tolerance, providing students immediate and objective feedback on their work. Interacting with this software—learning to manipulate 3D images by rotating, zooming in and out, and reviewing slices of the image—lays the groundwork for virtual planning software students will engage with in later courses.

Students continue their exposure to digital as they learn to take alginate impressions alongside scanning one another, including an intraoral scan of an upper and lower arch and bite. Additionally, students engage with implant treatment planning software, learning to virtually plan a case with a single dental implant with a crown and then a case involving an overdenture with two lower implants, and learn and practice the entire workflow for same-day crowns, from prepping the tooth and designing the case virtually to milling and custom staining the crown—making at least three crowns from start to finish in the simulation lab.

During their third and fourth years, students continue to learn, enhance their skills, and apply what they have practiced in the simulation lab on the clinic floor. The goal is to have each student complete the entire workflow and place at least two dental implants, in easier or more ideal cases, utilizing a surgical guide printed in-house.

More challenging cases are still referred to resident clinics in order to best support patient care.

The college continues to further enrich students’ digital dentistry experience through a variety of means. Recently, the college added six intraoral scanners of a different model to the DMD Student Clinic floor. With this addition, students will gain experience with three types of intraoral scanners and software—Cerec, Straumann, and Trios.

As vast improvements have been made in available materials to support 3D milling of dentures and with initial test cases resulting in positive patient outcomes, the college is also working to incorporate teaching and practicing digital workflows to support denture cases into the student curriculum, starting with second-year students. Additionally, planning for testing is underway for 3D printing of same-day interim dentures.

“Ultimately, our goal is to allow students to learn and experience creating a complete denture the conventional way, in a hybrid manner, and to fabricate a denture using an entirely digital workflow,” said Fuentealba.

As the area of digital dentistry continues to evolve, faculty and staff at the college are committed to staying abreast of improvements and introducing new tools and workflows, the latest software, and digital dentistry best practices to students.