Direct restorative treatments are a standard part of everyday clinical practice – but they come with challenges that cost time and cause stress. From shade selection and material handling to workflow management, many dentists find themselves repeatedly facing the same issues. The good news: a simplified universal composite such Tetric® plus provides targeted, practical solutions to many of these everyday problems. Below, we highlight five of the most common challenges – and how an appropriate material concept can help solve them effectively.
There are many ways to improve the efficiency of direct restorative procedures: selecting the right material, optimizing layering techniques and reducing curing times. We developed Tetric plus as a composite that makes the entire procedure more efficient and straightforward.
Tetric plus enables efficient curing of increments up to 4mm and incorporates 4-filler technology for optimal sculptability, polishability and rapid volume replacement, even in deep cavities. With consistent curing times starting at just 3 seconds per increment, there is no guesswork involved. Tetric plus integrates neatly into your existing workflow and simplifies it.
When it comes to polishing, Tetric plus stands out. Thanks to its optimized filler composition, the composite produces a smooth surface that can be polished to a high gloss in just one step using efficient intraoral polishers such as OptraGloss - often in just a few seconds. This significantly boosts the efficiency of your entire restorative workflow.
Until recently, it often felt like you had to choose between one or the other: fast or beautiful. But why not have both? With Tetric Plus, you can.
Tetric plus offers exceptional shade adaptation through its enhanced chameleon effect. It covers the entire range of natural tooth colours with just four shades. This is made possible by the material’s optimized translucency, diffused light transmission through specially designed filler structures and reduced pigment content. These features allow you to achieve highly esthetic restorations with precise shade blending, even in complex clinical situations.
What may seem almost invisible initially can have serious long-term consequences: Marginal gaps are among the most common causes of secondary caries, postoperative sensitivity and restorative failure. The main culprit? Polymerization shrinkage.
As the composite polymerizes, it contracts slightly. If the resulting stress is too high, the composite may pull away from the cavity walls, leading to gap formation. Even microscopic gaps can allow bacterial ingress.
The key to preventing this lies in using advanced materials that exhibit low shrinkage and controlled stress distribution. That is why Tetric plus includes a patented chain controller. In combination with the shrinkage stress reliever – a special filler with a particularly low modulus of elasticity – the chain controller mitigates both volume shrinkage and shrinkage stress.
The quality of a composite restoration depends heavily on how well the material handles. If the composite is too sticky, too soft or too runny, it not only tests your patience but also slows you down and can lead to avoidable errors in contouring or contact point creation.
Controlled, stable handling is especially crucial for complex restorations.
Designed for sculptable applications, Tetric plus Fill contains spherical fillers that provide excellent handling characteristics, allowing for easy, precise adaptation to cavity margins and stable shaping – even when adjacent areas are being sculpted, deformation remains minimal or barely noticeable.[1]
Chairside tip: You can safely heat Tetric plus Fill in a dental composite warmer to up to 68°C to lower its viscosity. No worries: The mechanical properties will not be affected.
For base layers or hard-to-reach areas, flowable Tetric plus Flow offers outstanding support with its exceptional thixotropic properties. Its specially designed formulation allows for both precise placement and excellent stability, preventing the material from flowing uncontrollably – for example into the sulcus during cervical Class V restorations. At the same time, its self-levelling consistency ensures excellent adaptation to cavity walls and enables efficient volume replacement, even in deep cavities.
The result: less reworking, clean margins and a material the entire team can rely on.
One composite for posterior teeth, another for anterior teeth, plus a flowable, a liner, a bulk-fill ... This not only increases inventory and ordering complexity but also makes workflows more difficult to manage, especially for new team members.
Tetric plus is an all-in-one composite, suitable for all cavity classes, from Class I to V. This universality reduces the need for multiple dedicated materials, allowing you to treat a wide range of cases with a single product. Less time is spent selecting and preparing materials during treatment, improving workflow efficiency.
The streamlined shade system with just 4 shades makes shade selection easy and straightforward. Using a Tetric plus or VITA* shade guide, you can easily determine the Tetric plus shade that best matches your case.
Direct restorative treatments do not have to be time-consuming or stressful. With Tetric plus, you not only streamline your workflow but also simplify your inventory and ordering processes. Fewer steps, easier handling and universal applications make Tetric plus a smart solution for more efficient and time-saving restorative workflows. This gives you the freedom to focus on what truly matters: Your patients and delivering outstanding clinical results.
Discover even more insights about Tetric® plus! Dive into how our four shades were inspired by natural tooth colors, or read how the Simplified Universal Composite can truly make your daily practice easier. We’ve linked all blog posts related to Tetric® plus in one place – so you won’t miss a single detail.
* No registered trademark of Ivoclar.
[1] In an internal study with over 170 participants, 92% reported experiencing ‘no’ or ‘barely noticeable deformations’ during handling.