Živilė Židonytė¹, Živilė Oleinikaitė¹, Urtė Mackevičiūtė¹

¹ Faculty of Odontology, Medical Academy, Lithuanian University of Health Sciences, Kaunas, Lithuania

Abstract

Digital technologies are being used constantly in prosthetic dentistry nowadays. As doctors are seeking for precise impressions of intraoral structures, it becomes familiar to predict which impression technique – digital or conventional, shows off better results and leads dentist to high quality restorations. There is no doubt that digital workflow saves more time, creates comfortable chair time for a patient, but exposes as very expensive device. In order to acknowledge whether final restoration is as accurate as a doctor seeks to be, it is purposeful to take into account marginal and internal discrepancy. This literature review presents advantages and disadvantages of both techniques for making fixed and removable prostheses. According to analyzed publications, statistically significant results between digital and conventional impression techniques by making fixed and removable prostheses were not found. It is important to mention that a few articles have shown better clinical results in using digital workflow than traditional. More studies has to be done to confirm this.

Key words: digital impressions, conventional impressions, removable prostheses, fixed restorations.