Fixed prosthodontic procedures comprise a major part of the services provided by general dentists in the United States. It has been estimated by the National Association of Dental Laboratories that there were about 36 million units, most of which were single crowns, placed in the United States during 2010 (Bennett Napier, co-executive director, personal communication, January 2011). Assuming that there were about 140,000 practicing general dentists in the United States and roughly 3,500 prosthodontists, it appears that each general dentist placed more than 20 units of crowns or multiunit fixed prostheses per month in 2010. There is significant revenue produced by fixed prosthodontic procedures, but practitioners and dental assistants must be highly organized and efficient to make this dental laboratory dependent side of dentistry profitable. All dentists using conventional procedures and/or in-office CAD/CAM milling devices have to be organized and time efficient to ensure an adequate return on their major investment for any technologies purchased.
In this article, we will discuss the current methods to accomplish fixed prosthodontic procedures and look at the products used in conventional techniques as well as in the constantly evolving and improving digital methods to produce restorations. We will emphasize the most commonly accomplished procedure, the single crown. The purpose of the article is to motivate practitioners to evaluate their personal fixed prosthodontic procedures, thus allowing them to make logical decisions about any potential desirable changes toward digital concepts in their clinical fixed prosthodontic technique
