Ignazio Loi, MD, DDS Private Practice, Cagliari, Italy
Antonello Di Felice, CDT Private Practice, Rome, Italy
Abstract
Tooth preparations for fixed prosthetic restorations can be done in different ways, basically of two kinds: preparation with a defined margin and the so-called vertical preparation or feather edge. The latter was originally used for prosthetics on teeth treated with resective surgery for periodontal disease. In this article, the author presents a prosthetic tech- nique for periodontally healthy teeth using feather edge preparation in a flap- less approach in both esthetic and posterior areas with ceramometal and zirconia restorations, achieving high quality clinical and esthetic results in terms of soft tissue stability at the prosthetic/tis- sue interface, both in the short and in the long term (clinical follow-up up to fifteen years). Moreover, the BOPT tech- nique, if compared to other preparation techniques (chamfer, shoulder, etc), is simpler and faster when in preparation impression taking, temporary crowns’ relining and creating the crowns’ profiles up to the final prosthetic restoration.
Introduction
One of the main clinical complications in fixed prosthodontics on natural teeth is the unsatisfactory esthetic result due to the apical migration of the gingival mar- gin.1,2
The tendency of the gingival margin to migrate apically in time, is related to different factors:
Inadequate quality and quantity of keratinized gingiva (thin biotypes are more likely to have recessions).
