What is a wax up? How important is it

[Teflondon95]

hey guys. What exactly is a “wax up” I’ve heard dental students say it a lot. Like we have a wax up due or whatever.. also, how important is it in ur curriculum. I ask because roseman dental school does not do any wax ups anymore in their curriculum. Is this a bad thing? Please clarify.

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[FanOfCostco]

Personally I don't think it's that important. It's basically you using wax and building a tooth with anatomy.

Will you ever wax up after dental school? Maybe. 90% chance you won't.

Roseman will just start out with composite which is not very forgiving if you mess up. But that's real world stuff for ya.

 

[Teflondon95]

Personally I don't think it's that important. It's basically you using wax and building a tooth with anatomy.

Will you ever wax up after dental school? Maybe. 90% chance you won't.

Roseman will just start out with composite which is not very forgiving if you mess up. But that's real world stuff for ya.

So for no reason would you ever put that wax in a real patients mouth and build on their tooth or anything? Like there is no use for it outside of just studying and getting familiar with the anatomy ?

 

[FanOfCostco]

So for no reason would you ever put that wax in a real patients mouth and build on their tooth or anything? Like there is no use for it outside of just studying and getting familiar with the anatomy ?

Hmm there are some cases where you might? I can't think of a reason really. Everything you can do with wax you do with composite inside the patients mouth.
The only example I can think of is if you need to take an impression for a temp crown and they have a broken cusp and you want to build it up with wax. But wax in a patients mouth sucks so I think 99.9% use composite for that

 

[FanOfCostco]

And if you go into a prost residency might be the only time after dental school that you would wax up.

Or if you like to wax up cases yourself. (Personally I don't. I just have the lab do it if needed.)

 

[Likkriue]

It depends on the school. Some schools don't have you wax others do. Personally I think it helps to learn some of the tooth anatomy for each tooth since you are literally trying to build every cusp and ridge. Clinically I have no idea.

 

[cooliyak]

If you get big into “cosmetic” dentistry, you have a higher chance of doing it outside of your dental anatomy/occlusion courses. You can “wax up” a case to show a patient what their smile can look like and make sure that veneers, anterior crowns, implant cases can work and look the way they expect. Things are moving quickly into the digital realm though so after dental school, you will most likely do that on the computer now. It’s faster, easier, and probably looks better.