Dentistry often requires an interdisciplinary approach to achieve an optimal result. In a full-mouth restoration, multidisciplinary management means coordinating restorative, surgical, periodontal, orthodontic, endodontic, and/or laboratory expertise around a single treatment plan. A digital workflow can make that coordination substantially more effective—but it all needs good planning and communication.
Contemporary digital tools are increasingly being used to improve functions like data acquisition, team collaboration, diagnostics, and treatment planning while aiding in restoration design and fabrication. Ultimately, it’s not just that digital protocols make full-mouth rehabilitation faster; rather, multidisciplinary digital planning can create a shared, restoratively driven treatment endpoint and allow each specialty to work toward it. While challenges exist, such as ensuring that the precision of the digital plan is continually validated biologically, functionally, and clinically, uniting various protocols in a single workflow helps achieve highly predictable outcomes.
In this issue we highlight the importance of interdisciplinary management—including restorative dentistry, orthodontics, prosthodontics/occlusion, esthetics, periodontics, and dental lab technology—and digital integration in a case report on the full-mouth rehabilitation of severe erosive wear. The author presents a comprehensive, digitally driven workflow that integrated aligner therapy to optimize both function and esthetics in a case of an Angle class I occlusion.
Other topics in this issue—all aimed at improving patient outcomes—include a review of present-day peri-implantitis treatments. While implant usage has increased over the past several decades, so has peri-implantitis prevalence. This article discusses currently available treatment modalities with an emphasis on implant surface decontamination.
Our continuing education (CE) series this month covers a growing—and potentially disconcerting—trend: the rise in usage of oral nicotine pouches. Although tobacco-free, these novel smokeless products are not necessarily beneficial for one’s oral or overall health, and could be detrimental. This article reviews these pouches, including their composition, prevalence, health impacts, and the role dental healthcare providers can and should play.
The second CE article looks at artificial intelligence (AI) in dentistry from a perspective of AI’s impact on the evolving standard of care, including medicolegal implications. The authors ask, “At what point do AI tools become standard of care?”
We all love it when a well-coordinated plan comes together. Everyone benefits—especially our patients. Please enjoy this issue of Compendium.
Sincerely,
Markus B. Blatz, DMD, PhD
Editor-in-Chief
markus.blatz@conexiant.com
