Flowable resins

[ItsGavinC]

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I'm curious as to who is using flowable composites and in what capacity?

Does anybody sandwich restorative composite bewteen layers of flowable? One of our professors is REALLY pushing this to students, but I'm not too sure about the technique.

 

[DDSSlave]

Sandwiching does seem to be a better technique, but I've only used it once. I do use flowables in PRR's and very small occlusal restorations.

 

[UConn_SDM]

When I use flowable for a composite I generally use it first to "coat" the floor of the prep to get good adaptation, light cure and incrementally place regular composite on top until the prep is full.

The "sandwich" technique I'm aware of (there is an open and closed sandwich) is for very deep class II you can buildup the bottom of the box if it's subgingival/in root with GI. Place the GI and treat it like root structure and restore normally.

 

[DcS]

As with UConn I will use it as a "liner" in the proximal boxes of deep class IIs, but do not finish the "sandwich" technique by applying it over the top. A pediatric guy I worked with for a while really has had good results using it as a base in deep preps.

 

[DrJeff]

I use them under just all all of my composite restorations as a "liner". The way I place mine is how I learned in a CE course from Dr. Buddy Mopper (He owns Cosmosdent). After etching and apply my bonding agent and light curing the bonding agent, I'll place a smnall amout of flowable into the prep and then before curing the flowable, I'll put my 1st increment of my "regular" composite and compact/sculpt. This way, the flowable is being squeezed/spread onto/into all apsects of the prep. I wasn't having too uch post restoration sensitivity before I started utilizing this "wet flowable" technique, but nowadays, if a patient comes in with post placement sensitivity and the occlusion is OK, I can almost guarentee that its a going to be and endo and not any deficiency in the entire dentinal tubule/bonding agent/restorative material interface casuing the problem.

I'll also use flowbale as my material of choice in small class V's, and small class I's. It's also great to use to "touch up" areas on temporary crowns made with auto polymerizing resin.

 

[ItsGavinC]

After etching and apply my bonding agent and light curing the bonding agent, I'll place a smnall amout of flowable into the prep and then before curing the flowable, I'll put my 1st increment of my "regular" composite and compact/sculpt. This way, the flowable is being squeezed/spread onto/into all apsects of the prep.

That's the method that I'm a fan of, although admittedly I haven't done it yet. It simply *sounds* like a good method to me.

 

[DcS]

It's also great to use to "touch up" areas on temporary crowns made with auto polymerizing resin.

I'll second that bigtime! Very useful for short/missed margins on temps.

I'll also use it for CCRs, not sure if you guys use that terminology, but basically when you do an enameloplasty, maybe slightly deeper to a shallow class I, and cure some flowable and then some sealant on top. Works very well in those cases, our pedo dept is fond of CCRs.