Twenty-five years ago, as I was driving to the train station on the way to my first ever dental meeting, the Greater New York, one of my crowns fell off! I was in a panic! I couldn’t turn around and go to my dentist, over an hour away from where I was. So I stopped at the first dental office I saw, explained the situation, and was seated immediately and fitted with a temporary crown. Luckily it was a posterior tooth because the temporary was clunky, rough, tasted terrible, and I think it fell off once or twice before I could get to my dentist over a week later. But I can still remember how grateful I was to have randomly picked a practice with the technology to do a quickie temporary crown back then.
It goes without saying that today’s temporary materials have come a long way. First, they are esthetic. Second, they have high fracture resistance. Third, they generally don’t come off until they are supposed to.
Visalys Temp, from Kettenbach, meets all the above demands and is easily incorporated into routine daily practice. Designed for fabricating temporary crowns, partial crowns, bridges, inlays, onlays, and veneers, Visalys Temp is a two-component, self-curing, acrylic composite monomer with a unique formulation that doesn’t contain bisphenol-A (BPA) or any of its chemical precursors. Being BPA-free means one less chemical patients, and especially dentists, need to worry about being exposed to on a daily basis.
Visalys Temp is very simple to use: It is easily dispensed, and is flowable without being runny. It has consistently shown excellent fit at the margins, fewer voids, and a fast set time. It has a high luster even without polishing, which saves more time (especially if your patient is in a rush!). It trims precisely without producing a lot of dust. And it results in enough translucency and fluorescence to be used in the esthetic zone. With seven shades to choose from, matching adjacent teeth and restorations is not tricky at all. And you can rest assured that your patient can eat and speak normally, oblivious to the fact that a temporary crown is there.
Considering the many unpredictable reasons wh
y a patient might need a natural-looking provisional restoration, it’s good to know that Visalys Temp is so stable and fracture-resistant it can even be used for long-term temporary restorations. You never know what might prevent someone from getting back in the dental chair within the prescribed amount of time.