Assalamualaikum,
Hi diligent readers! Today I had my prosthetic lab and I have been meaning to include some pictures into the post so that you could see and understand everything better but unfortunately I didn't have the time to do so. Well the bell rang before I could grab my phone. - Should have brought the phone earlier. Sighhhh...
Anyway, I've finished my secondary cast a session earlier so today I pretty much had nothing to do. So me being me, I wandered around and trying my best to be helpful to others. Harhar. I decided to help a friend of mine since she had trouble taking the secondary impression.
To tell you the truth, impression taking is my number one weakness. I hate mixing the materials and the time constraint made the whole experience a lot worse. Just imagine having to mix everything so that it would be homogenous both in colour and consistency under a very limited amount of time. It stresses me out sometimes. I'm only doing it on a soulless phantom head for now but just imagine having to do it on a real patient. It'd be a nightmare if I've overmixed or too slow in putting it into the patient's mouth that it set beforehand. And impression taking is definitely a very messy procedure.
I've worked with ZOE ( Zinc Oxide Eugenol ) before and it's very messy and it sticks everywhere. So the next time I'd use it on a real patient, be sure to remind me to use vaseline and apply it on the region of the mouth so that it won't stick and irritate the patient. This time around, I was introduced to a new impression material; alginate, which is much easier to work with and the indication of it's usage is when there's undercut or when you are taking impression of a dentulous (with teeth) patient. Alginate is an elastic material so it would record better details and the only downside of it is that you'd need extra retention on your tray. That's why I had to prepare a perforated special tray. And adding adhesive to the tray will help immensely.
So coming back to today's story, one of my friend was having difficulty of producing the exact negative impression of the phantom's mouth that she had to do it multiple of times, up to a point of severe frustration. If I were to be in her shoes, I'd definitely be frustrated, heck I'd be very pissed but she wasn't. How I admire her patience and I have to make sure to be as patient as her the next time I face the same problem. Okay, so I helped her remove some of the excess of the previous impression material and reapply vaseline on the tooth and all over the phantom's mouth. Although alginate isn't sticky but it's necessary since there's no saliva in the phantom's mouth so the impression material might stick. In the real patient, applying vaseline to the teeth isn't necessary.
And she came with a new batch of impression material and we were set to do it. During the previous mixing I noticed that she wasn't actually mixing it properly. You have to press the material on the side of the bowl to make sure that it would mix thoroughly. And when you put it on the tray make sure to even the impression out using the spatula so that you'd be taking a nice impression later on. Those were the things I did with the next impression taking. Thank god, the end result was alright. I wouldn't say it was perfect but it was okay that doctor in charge passed her.
It was all a good day's work. Then we produced the cast out of the impression. This part I'll explain on another lengthy post. So what I learned today? I learned that we have to always be patient and always remember to put in the right technique. That's why paying a good attention to the technique during demostration is a must. Jotting down everything will be a bonus mark to the whole process. And I also learned that friends are very important. :)
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