Plant it Low, Let it Grow? Occlusion, CR and all things Confusing for Students – PS010

It’s Friday and you’re fitting the last patient’s crown. It is completely shy of the bite – but it looks good. The patient says ‘it feels great! I can hardly feel anything!’

Do you cement it (plant it low?) and let it grow? Is that acceptable?

How about the ‘GABS occlusal philosophy?’

Is ‘centric relation’ full of unicorns and rainbows?

What is an efficient protocol in ‘checking the occlusion’?

Join us in this episode where we discuss some key techniques to help ensure we are managing occlusion as a primary focus when dealing with restorative treatment. This episode is packed with essential tips that are perfect for dental students and professionals alike. 

Don’t miss the special notes on Occlusion, CR & All Things Confusing available exclusively in the Protrusive Guidance app! (Crush Your Exams section)

Need to Read it? Check out the Full Episode Transcript below!

This episode is not eligible for CPD/CE points, but never fear, there are hundreds of hours of CPD for Dentists waiting for you on the Protrusive App!

For the full educational experience, our Ultimate Education Plan gives you access to all our courses, webinars, and exclusive monthly content.

If you love this episode, be sure to recap PDP109 – Articulating Paper is Lying to Us

Click below for full episode transcript:

Teaser: Here we are, a little bit late, but this is the Protrusive Students version for Occlusion Month. We've got our Protusive student, Emma Hutchison, who once again has done a wonderful job to create these student notes.

Jaz’s Introduction:
You can download these for free on the community, there’s a special students area, and you can also catch up with the previous nine other Protrusive student notes, bespoke notes, just for students. Very visual and written by Emma herself, inspired by what she’s learning at uni and also what she’s learning online. Head over to protrusive. app to check that out.

Hello, Protruserati. I’m Jaz Gulati and welcome back to your favorite dental podcast. This episode is huge. Like when I was a dental student, anything to do with occlusion was mega confusing. Like even down to adjusting a basic composite. Like you’ve just placed a composite, and you’re picking up the bur, and you have no idea what you’re doing. Was it just me, or is that you as well?

Well, how about we cover in this episode for the benefit of students, and of course, anyone in dentistry, or dentists can actually learn something from this episode, I think. We need to talk about some specific protocols taught to me that I’m sharing with you guys, and we go deeper into what actually happens if you start leaving teeth out of occlusion, i. e. You restore a tooth and now that tooth is no longer actually touching the opposing tooth. It’s no longer contributing to the patient’s occlusion.

Is it always a sin? Is it acceptable? And how do you actually go about avoiding that? Like, how can you actually be more precise in your occlusal adjustment? We also, of course, talk about the influence of different thicknesses of articulating paper and why you should avoid using thick papers. There’s a lot to unpack here, so let’s join the main interview and I’ll see you in the outro.

Main Episode:
Okay, Emma, you just had some exams. Okay, so welcome back. How was it? How did it go?

[Emma]
It was okay. I think they’re alw