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Medical Center - University of Freiburg leads study on automated milling processes for dental prostheses / 940,000 euros in funding from the German Research Foundation (DFG)

Improper diet, heartburn and eating disorders can lead to acid damage to the teeth. The most gentle method of restoring teeth to date is veneering them with hand-made partial crowns. However, this minimally invasive ceramic restoration is very time-consuming and expensive. A study led by Prof. Dr. Petra Gierthmühlen, Senior Physician at the Department of Prosthetic Dentistry (Medical Director: Prof. Dr. Dr. h.c. Jörg Strub) at the Medical Center - University of Freiburg, is investigating whether a computer-aided - and therefore significantly more efficient - restoration for patients with acid-induced tooth damage produces equally good results as hand-made, minimally invasive partial crowns. The German Research Foundation (DFG) is providing around 940,000 euros in funding for the project, which has now been approved and will begin in mid-2016. It will be carried out at eight centers in Germany and will last three years. A total of 96 patients will be included in the study, in which more than 1,000 teeth are expected to be restored with ceramic and metal-free restorations.

Dentures from the computer milling machine

In the current study, the scientists are comparing hand-made dental restorations with those produced using the computer-aided CAD-CAM process. CAD-CAM stands for "computer-aided design" and "computer-aided manufacturing" and refers to a procedure in which the partial crown is first modeled three-dimensionally in the computer and then milled from a ceramic block using this data by a milling machine.

"If computer-milled dental restorations perform just as well as hand-made restorations in terms of patient satisfaction and clinical use, a large group of patients could benefit from more efficient and cost-effective computer-aided manufacturing," says Prof. Gierthmühlen.

Tooth damage caused by poor diet, heartburn and eating disorders

Acid-related tooth damage is caused, for example, by the massive consumption of acidic drinks, burping or regular vomiting due to eating disorders. This leads to an irreversible loss of tooth structure and, as a result, sensitive and unaesthetic teeth as well as impaired chewing function. "In most cases, a large part or even all of the teeth are affected by the damage. This is why dental treatment for these patients is particularly complex," says Prof. Gierthmühlen.

In the past, such patients were often treated with full crowns, which required a lot of material to be ground away from the original tooth. Newer, minimally invasive treatment concepts, on the other hand, aim to be as gentle as possible, correcting only the actual defects and incorporating the original tooth structure.

The Department of Prosthetic Dentistry has many years of experience in clinical and material science studies on innovative metal-free dental treatment methods. In order to eliminate the causes of acid-related damage, patients at the Medical Center - University of Freiburg are treated in an interdisciplinary cooperation between the Department of Prosthetic Dentistry, the Department of Internal Medicine II and the Department of Psychosomatic Medicine and Psychotherapy.

Caption: Prof. Dr. Petra Gierthmühlen

Image source: Britt Schilling / Medical Center - University of Freiburg

Further information:
Department of Prosthetic Dentistry

Press release of the German Research Foundation