EIELSON AIR FORCE BASE, Alaska --
The 354th Medical Group dental clinic recently received equipment that can help keep Icemen deployable when they’re in need of a root canal and a crown.
The equipment, which consists of a digital impression machine, a mill and an oven, significantly reduces a time-intensive, three week process and turns it into a same day process completed in a few hours.
“We’re looking at taking a four-appointment process down to a single appointment, saving so much time we can keep our Airmen deployable same day versus having to wait,” said Capt. Jeffery Kohler, a 354th Medical Group general dentist.
Prior to the new equipment the process took so much time because the crown would have to be fabricated from a dental lab in Colorado Springs, Colo., which would take weeks to be molded and mailed back to Eielson.
The new process uses a digital impression machine that takes thousands of images to create a digital 3-D image of the teeth. Based on the images, a program creates a proposed crown, which the dentist can then manipulate to ensure it is a perfect fit. Once the dentist is satisfied with the digital crown the data is sent to a milling machine that carves the crown out of porcelain. The crown is then placed into an oven to strengthen the material. After the crown cools off it is polished, sanitized and ready for the patient.
“One of the major benefits of this process is saving time,” Kohler said. “From a mobilization standpoint, we can get our Airmen ready to fight faster.”