The excellence in esthetic dentistry will never be achieved by chance, but consistently from a systematic approach for diagnosis, communication, treatment planning, execution, and case maintenance. Digital Smile Design is a multipurpose conceptual protocol that provides remarkable advantages: it strengthens the diagnostic abilities through an extra-and-intra oral esthetic and structural evaluation, improves the communication between the team members, and enhances the patients visual perception, education, and motivation, increasing the effectiveness of case presentation and accordingly case acceptance.
From patient's selected meaningful pictures and videos, the DSD ethically involves the patients in the restorative or smile enhancement process, making them the
"co-author"of their treatment, sharing objectives, responsibilities, and expectations with the restorative team. The results are significantly improved once it integrates the restorative technical requirements with the emotional needs, predictably outlining the path to establish a natural, confident, and beautiful smile.
The whole concept is based upon the analysis of the patients facial and dental proportions, utilizing a predetermined series of high quality digital photographs and videos to acquire the knowledge of the relationship of the teeth, gums, lips, smile with the facial features in motion and with emotion. Digital drawings are made over the pictures, following a didactical sequence and a digital ruler is provided to precisely transfer measurments from the software to the actual study model providing wth all the needed information for creation of a Guided Diagnostic Wax Up. Duplicate of the wax up is further used for transfering the wax up to an actual acrilic mock up in the patients mouth, visualizing the final restoration before the actual treatment is taking place.
