Digital case checklist.
Most digital cases that stall do so for one of a small number of reasons, all of which are caught at the chair by working to a routine.
Before you start scanning
Confirm the case is set up correctly in the software: right patient, right tooth numbers, right restoration type, right laboratory. Correcting any of these afterwards is possible but fiddly, and some corrections require rescanning.
Check the scanner tip is clean and warmed and the unit is within its calibration interval. A scan degraded by a fogged or scratched tip is not obvious while capturing and very obvious in the laboratory.
Achieve retraction and haemostasis before capture, not during it.
During capture
Run a consistent path — occlusal surfaces first to establish the arch, then back along the lingual and buccal, moving steadily rather than hovering or jumping.
Capture the adjacent teeth in full and enough of the arch beyond them for the bite alignment to work with. Capture the opposing arch to the same standard.
Confirm the patient is fully closed in maximum intercuspation, then capture the buccal bite on both sides.
Before you send
Rotate the model and inspect the margin around its full circumference. Check the insertion axis rather than accepting the default view. Look for holes, particularly interproximally and behind the most posterior unit. Check the occlusal contacts the bite alignment has produced.
Mark the margin if the software allows and you are confident of the finish line. Do not trim soft tissue aggressively near a margin — excess tissue in a scan is harmless, a trimmed-away margin is not.
Read the case setup back once. A meaningful proportion of digital cases arrive technically perfect and functionally wrong because of how the case was created rather than how it was scanned.
What travels with the file
Material, shade with the guide named, margin type, antagonist, the date you need it, and anything unusual about the case.
Photographs for anterior and shade-critical work. For implant cases, the system, product line, platform and connection, the intended retention, and whether a stock or custom abutment is expected.
Where the software prescription and the written prescription disagree, we have to stop and ask which is correct.
Case-type additions
Anterior: preparation shade, photographs including the contralateral, and a note on whether a try-in stage is wanted.
Implant: emergence captured before the scan body was placed, and a photograph of the healing abutment before removal.
Multi-unit: whether the units are to be splinted, and whether a framework try-in or verification stage is planned.
Where digital cases actually stall
In rough order of frequency: a margin obscured at capture and reconstructed by the software; a bite alignment producing implausible contacts; a case setup in the software contradicting the written prescription; implant component detail missing; and a shade sent without the guide named.
Every one is caught at the chair by the checks above, and every one costs days once the patient has left.
A practice that works to a routine sends cases that proceed without a call, which shortens them more reliably than any other single change.
If something is not right
Send it anyway with a note, rather than silently. A case arriving with a clear statement — margin uncertain on the distal, clearance accepted as tight, bite record difficult — is handled correctly first time.
The same case sent without a note stops partway through fabrication at a less convenient point.
More in Digital Dentistry
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.