Operatoria dental: bases para una buena práctica

A wide variety of oral rehabilitation treatments are performed in current dental practice, including operative dentistry procedures.  In this area, the dental professional performs definitive treatments using dental biomaterials, including dental composites, amalgams, glass ionomer cements, among other materials, to protect the dentin-pulp organ with the purpose of protecting the patient´s health status.  Operative dentistry procedures must be performed due to the presence of caries, congenital conditions or dental trauma that destroy the tooth or a part of it.  These procedures are intended to restore the form and function of affected teeth and, in most cases, their aesthetics.

Operative dentistry procedures are one of the first restorative treatments performed by students at the Faculty of Dentistry, Universidad Cooperativa de Colombia, Medellin-Envigado campus.  Therefore, the book “OPERATORIA DENTAL: bases para una buena práctica” has been designed as a facilitating tool for undergraduate students to learn and achieve their competences in a simulated environment to apply the acquired knowledge later on during their clinical practice.

The main purpose of this book is to develop the necessary clinical criteria in dental students to carry out an integral dental practice by providing a theoretical support that enables them to develop clinical skills in operative dentistry procedures.

Some of the topics in the book include the identification of dental instruments employed in operative dentistry procedures, the differentiation and analysis of general, biological and mechanical principles of tooth preparations to propose an assertive treatment plan according to the patient´s own situation, the classification of different cavity preparation designs according to the location and extension of the carious lesion or defect, the management of the operative times that involve the final restoration of a tooth and all the biomaterials and their indications for the different clinical situations that may be present in a patient.