Facebows – When and Why (Not) To Use Them – PDP097

Protrusive Dental Podcast

The best articulator is the patient's TMJ, but you knew that already, right? As a dental student I was always confused by Facebows in Dentistry and their role. Lots of clinicians I respect used facebows....but many others do not! What role do Facebows play in relation to Articulators? How can we make sure that articulators mimic the human articulation as accurately as possible? I am joined by Dr Salman Pirmohamed to end our confusion with Facebows! https://youtu.be/l3MrLVTYsz8 Check out this full episode on YouTube Need to Read it? Check out the Full Episode Transcript below! Protrusive Dental Pearl: If you're planning to increase the occluso-vertical dimension (perhaps for multiple restorations or an occlusal appliance) and you know the final vertical dimension, try recording your Centric relation record (or whichever bite religion you follow) AT that desired vertical dimension and NOT at the 'first point of contact'. This is because traditionally when we send the technician a first point of contact bite, they will open up the pin to give you the space that you need for the restorations and optimal aesthetics. The problem with this is that it introduces an error because the arc closure/opening of the patient is likely going to be different (even with the best Facebow in the world) to the arc on the articulator. Therefore, reduce that error by doing your bite registration, not at the first point of contact, but doing it at where you want to finish. Read that again! In this episode we discussed: Implant cases in MClindent in prosthodontics at Eastman 8:32Microbrush Technique (Stickbite) 12:24The ‘Putty Bite’ technique 16:05When to use the ‘Putty Bite’ technique? 18:29 What is the role of a Facebow? 20:52Benefits of a Facebow registration 23:41Communicating to the technician in terms of using an average Value Articulator 25:23Making Facebows a part of your Clinical Practice 31:02Kois DentoFacial Analyzer 36:40 Guidelines for using a Facebow 38:34 Check out this papers as mentioned by Dr Salaman on the Podcast! Face-bow-transfer-in-prosthodonticsDownload Dogmas-in-prosthodonticsDownload If you liked this episode, you might enjoy A Story of Digital Occlusion with Dr Ian Buckle Click below for full episode transcript: Opening Snippet: So that makes the best type of articulator, which is the patient, the patient is the best articulator. Like when you have temporaries or mock up so you can try something, you know, you've got complex restorations, just putting temporaries in the mouth, but lab provisionals checking the patient, if it will make sense, cement them in temporaries, see how it goes and when you're happy, just take a copy and use that because that's actually the best articulator you'll get... Jaz' Introduction: Let's say you have a patient in front of you and you're observing their movements, you're observing their left lateral excursion, their right lateral excursion, and this just a bite in general with their delicate, wear facets and now you're planning some restorations. Let's say you can do some crowns and veneers on this patient. Now, you send the case to a technician, a technician that you'd like to work with and what they will do is they will design some restorations. And what they hope is that as they are planning the excursions on the restorations, when they send you back that work and you try-in in the mouth, the movements that the lab was making is the same as what you're finding in the mouth. So essentially, going from patient to the technician and back to the patient. Okay? So how can we make sure that this is as reliable and as predictable as possible? Well, that's why we use articulators, right? So we use articulators to mimic the TMJ and mimic the upper jaw and the lower jaw and all the movement. So that's essentially why we use articulators, but we know that the best articulator is the TMJ. So now we have tools. Tools that help to sort of supposedly help to impro...