Ask a technician.
A technician who works on restorative cases every day knows things that are genuinely useful at the treatment planning stage. That resource is available and consistently under-used.
What we can help with
Whether a preparation will support the material you have in mind. How much clearance a given restoration actually needs. Whether an implant angulation will permit screw retention. How an anterior match is likely to behave against a highly characterized neighbour.
Also the practical questions: which record a difficult case wants, whether a try-in stage is worth the appointment, and how to approach a case that has already been remade once.
None of this replaces clinical judgement. It is information that helps a decision, and it costs a phone call.
Call before preparing, not after impressing
The most valuable conversation happens before the tooth is touched, because that is when every option remains open. Once a preparation exists, the material choice is constrained by whatever clearance was created.
Three minutes at the planning stage routinely prevents a remake. The same question asked after the record is taken frequently produces the answer that the patient needs to come back.
The cases that go wrong are disproportionately the ones where the first contact with the laboratory was the arrival of the impression.
What to have ready
The clinical picture: which tooth, what has failed, what the antagonist is, whether parafunction is evident, how much clearance you expect to have, and how demanding the aesthetic requirement is.
Photographs help enormously and can be sent while you are on the phone. For an implant question, the system and platform if you have them.
And what you are actually asking. A specific question gets a specific answer; a general request for advice gets a general one.
What we will not decide for you
Whether a tooth should be restored at all. Whether a patient will accept further reduction. What the treatment plan should be. Those are clinical decisions and they belong with the person who has examined the patient.
Where a case involves a genuine trade-off — strength against aesthetics, conservation against retention — we will set out the consequences of each and the decision stays yours.
What we will do is tell you plainly when something will not work, rather than making it and letting you discover it at delivery.
Tell us how much you want to be consulted
Practices differ. Some want to be called about everything; others would rather we proceed on our judgement for anything minor and only call for decisions that change the treatment.
Either works. What does not work is us guessing which you are.
Say so at the outset and we will handle borderline cases the way you prefer.
Feedback is a conversation too
The most valuable thing a practice can tell a laboratory is what happened at the seat appointment, and almost nobody does.
The contact was heavy on the mesial. The occlusion needed adjusting on the distobuccal cusp. The shade read slightly high in value once it was in. None of that is a complaint — it is calibration, and a laboratory that receives it can adjust how it builds for your practice specifically.
Over a year, a practice that feeds back is measurably easier to make work for. One that never comments receives our best generic guess indefinitely.
How to reach us
Call the laboratory during business hours, Monday to Friday, 9:00 am to 5:00 pm, and ask for someone who works on the type of case in question.
For anything not urgent, the contact page reaches the laboratory and accepts photographs and completed prescriptions.
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Send a case
Digital scans and conventional impressions are both accepted. Cases move by UPS and Purolator, and Fairmont works with practices throughout British Columbia and across Canada.