Symposium: Minimal-invasive Tooth Preparation Tools

Tooth cavities are commonly prepared by means of rotary instruments equipped with either diamond or tungsten carbide burs. While prepared relatively fast, bur-prepared cavities are however often larger than dictated by the actual caries extent. In addition, bevelling of margins for adhesive purposes in critical approximal regions is often not feasible using burs. Also, iatrogenic bur damage of healthy adjacent teeth has been reported to be responsible for a substantial amount of new caries lesions. All these drawbacks associated with conventional rotary cavity preparation techniques, along with the current trend towards ‘minimal invasive' or ‘minimum intervention' dentistry have lately lead to the introduction of new tools or to the revival of already existing techniques that until recently were considered as somewhat less practical. They all intend to facilitate the preparation of micro-cavities with minimal sacrifice of sound tooth substrate. Besides an overview of the different cavity preparation tools that are currently available for minimal-invasive tooth preparation and a discussion of their impact on the tooth substrate to be bonded to, specific lectures will be held to demonstrate the potential of sono-abrasion, air-abrasion and a novel enzymatic caries removal approach.