Abstract:

In prosthetic dentistry, foresight presentation to patients about final restoration is commonly used before treatment. Today digital technologies have been preferred much more according to traditional methods due to their practical and archiving for aesthetic treatments. The aim of the study is to examine the effects of traditional and digital design methods on patient pleasure about clinical final restoration. In the study, traditional and digital smile designs were performed on two groups of patients. First of all, photographic records of the patients were taken. There were 52 porcelain laminates in each group. While 52 PLVs were designed digitally with the keynote program before starting the treatment the other 52 PLVs were traditionally designed as intraoral direct composite application manual. Patient consents were obtained, and after the designs were presented to the patients, the routine PLV restoration procedure was started and the treatments were completed. 1-month clinical follow-up of PLV restorations was performed. Evaluations were analyzed on patient satisfaction using a visual analog scale (VAS). In this study, the design of the laminates, patient satisfaction, determination of the number of anterior restorations, and the visibility of the contact areas of the porcelain laminates when viewed from the anterior were evaluated. Student’s t test, Shapiro-wilk test and Mann-Whitney U test were used in our study. There was no statistical difference between the traditional digital design method in terms of patient satisfaction (p=0.386). There was no statistical difference between the restoration satisfaction between the two design groups (p=0.893). There was no significant difference in the number of visible contacts between the groups. There was no significant difference in the number of anterior restorations between the groups. This study will contribute to the literature in that it is a clinical research, that the PLV pre- restoration design technique has no effect on patient satisfaction in terms of final restoration, and that traditional design methods are very popular and give equivalent results to digital design methods.