Cadent iTero Cases – Follow-up…

The Cadent model serves both as a working and solid cast – a situation that can cause extra work in the lab as it is difficult to seat mesial and distal contacts simultaneously – one or the other always seems to open up right at the end of the seating process making a small porcelain addition necessary.

One of my blog readers made a comment that it is possible to order the Cadent model with removable dies adjacent to the prep dies.  I need to look into this, but I wonder if that adjustment in the model fabrication method would result in overly tight contacts as the dies adjacent to the preps might be prone to micro-movements.  I will talk with our Cadent rep, and let you know what I find out.

In the meantime, here are some photos of two of the finished cases - 

1.  Occlusal view of a 3-unit bridge.

2.  Buccal view of 3-unit bridge.  One interesting item of note – The Cadent dies feature what I would describe as a “dual ditch”.  The margins are delineated from the die stump by a flat area, approximately  0.5 mm in width, below the actual margin.  The actual ditch of the margin is located cervical to the flat area.  This was a little confusing at first as every die looks as if the margin type was a shoulder with bevel.  I personally would prefer a small ditch directly under the margin to minimize the opportunity for errors during waxing and finishing.

3. This is a view of the 3-unit bridge on Cadent’s full arch articulator.  The red mark on the opposing cast indicates where we trimmed the model to provide adequate space for a PFM restoration.  The articulator was easy to work with, but I think Cadent should look into providing some type of pin to prevent overclosure during seating of the occlusion.  This particular case had no posterior stops, so we had to be very diligent to create an open occlusion on the molar abutment.  It is Cadent’s contention that we could disk off the “strut” that is used to attach the models to the Cadent articulator, and remount the case in the lab on a conventional articulator; or they have jigs available that allow for the models to be mounted on a Denar instrument.  I’m sure we will gain experience with both of these methods in the future, but we were operating under time constraints, so we proceeded with the cases as provided.

As the prescribing dentist resides in Alaska, I hope to get his feedback as to the fit and occlusion some time next week.  Will update you with his comments.