WAX-UP AND MOCK-UP – HOW TO EFFECTIVELY PLAN FOR CROWNS & VENEERS

Mock up is a diagnostic procedure, extremely useful to Cosmetic Dentistry. The purpose of mock up is to present the desired outcome on teeth and smile before the dental lab start making the protheses. Imagine mock up like a smile simulation, happening directly over your teeth, something like a test smile. It temporarily changes the shape and colour of your teeth in order to help you decide on the final protheses.

In the video below, you can see the smile of our patient before and after the mock up procedure. It is extremely useful in identifying the shape of the prostheses. In term of colour, the colour of the mock-up will not look like the final color of the protheses because we use the same resin material for all mock-ups. However, if your teeth are discolored, mock-up can still give you an idea of how your final teeth will look like as it will show a better color than your actual teeth.

Mock-up is not performed for all cases, generally only for cases with drastic changes or cases where the patient is unsure of what they want. Mock-up is a very useful planning & design tool because it simulates the final outcome and it can be repeated as many times as needed in order to select the best possible solution.

HOW IS A MOCK-UP CREATED IN VIETNAM?

The procedure starts with the examination of the patient and the discussion of their esthetic concerns and needs. We then use Smile Design software to create a picture of the patient’s smile with the desired outcome so the patient have an idea of how the final product will look like. We make an impression of the teeth and fabricate a cast (the stone cast you see in the video).

Based on the above information, pictures and cast, our in-house lab technician will make changes to the dental cast by adding wax to the cast. In the following appointment, the dentist and the patient discuss the wax up and figure out if there are more changes that need to be made. When everyone is happy with the diagnostic wax up, our lab technician copies it with silicon and fabricates a silicon index (the purple material you see in the video). With the help of resin material placed inside the index and then directly over your teeth, we copy the wax up on your teeth. When we remove the index from the mouth, the result is immediately visible.

When all procedures are done precisely, we can provide our patients with beautiful prostheses, like in the case of the following video, where you can see the initial smile, the smile with the mock up and the final result with the porcelain crown.