16/08/2026
A simple clinical tip … and course plug ;)
Dentists who provide cosmetic restorative treatments would appreciate having a range of shades for their provisional materials. As someone who regularly performs immediate implant placements and immediate restorations I’ve found having a custom-made shade guide useful. The image below shows the shade guide I made with an old/obsolete shade guide. It was made by cutting off the old tabs and luting tabs made from the provisional material itself. The left 5 are TempSmart (shades BW, B1, A1, A2 and A3) which I use for implant-borne and tooth-borne provisional crown and bridgework. TempSmart has great fracture toughness. The right 3 are Luxatemp Star (shades B1, A1 and A2) which I use for provisional veneers. I’ve found TempSmart’s modulus of elasticity too stiff for provisional veneers. If you do “Holywood” type smiles I would recommend having BL shade in Luxatemp Star also. The shade tabs are made by injection of the provisional material into a PVS impression of a crown. If you don’t have an old shade guide to use, an alternative would be using rivets from Bunnings to insert into the material as it is setting. You could then make a tab holder out of putty or 3D print one and drill holes in it to hold the rivets. Polish/glaze the tabs as you would in the clinical setting so that the tabs have similar light reflecting/transmitting characteristics.
A word about the course - it's been a long time coming. I did convene a PET course years ago for a group of 15-20 dentists, and also assisted Prof Howard Gluckman with his course which was excellent, but I felt that I had not refined the technique well enough for it to be predictable for varying levels of attendee experience/skill. Furthermore I felt that I could not dedicate sufficient time to each attending dentist to teach all the nuances, as it is a method that is technique sensitive and requires a high level of precision. I'm finally ready :)
More info here: https://www.specialistprosthodontists.com/petcourse
