Naval Health Clinic Hawaii's Makalapa Dental Clinic is one of five commands selected as a pilot site for the implementation of advanced digital dental technologies by the Navy Dental Corps.

As part of a $9 million investment in Computer Aided Design and Computer Aided Manufacturing (CAD-CAM) technologies by Navy Medicine, these technologies have shown improved consistency, efficiency, and predictability in the fabrication of dental restorations such as veneers, crowns, and bridges compared to more traditional approaches to dental medicine.

Using CAD-CAM technologies, the Makalapa Dental Clinic has in-house capabilities to fabricate and deliver many types of dental restorations though use of digital scanning, virtual designing, and the manufacturing of dental restorations in a same-day appointment. This means instead of traditional "goopy" impressions and the necessity to wear a temporary crown for a period of time, the dentist can make the restoration in one appointment through a high-tech digital process.

The implementation and application of these technologies have revolutionized patient care by improving treatment planning, material choices, consistency, predictability, quality assurance, and efficiency of dental restoration fabrication. These advanced abilities are some of the many new components of delivering highly reliable, safe and quality patient care at Naval Health Clinic Hawaii.

These new technologies have the ability to move modern dental medicine from science fiction to reality. Capt. Kimberly Davis, executive officer, Naval Health Clinic Hawaii, coined an appropriate term for these treatments -- "Star Trek Dentistry."

The laboratory system designed by Navy dental specialty leaders is using futuristic digital data acquisition technologies for virtual design and manufacturing capabilities. In the civilian world, a group practice philosophy of dental treatment with these types of technologies is very uncommon under a one-roof setting. These developments are exciting for patients because there is less time spent in temporary dental prosthetics, there are shorter clinical appointments and patients have the assurance of the highest quality restorations available.

The Makalapa Dental Clinic also has an array of cutting-edge laboratory technologies to essentially fabricate any type of restorations or prostheses to include crowns, veneers, dental implant restorations, bridges, dentures, aides for guided surgeries, and night guards through the assistance of 3-D printing and advanced automated milling capabilities. The CAD-CAM processes automate and reduce human errors involved in many of these steps of creating dental prosthetics.

So the next time dental work is required at Makalapa Dental Clinic, rest assured the highest quality restorations will be available with truly cutting-edge technologies.

The primary objective of the United States Navy Dental Corps is to ensure dental readiness while optimizing dental health by providing care for active-duty Sailors, Marines and Coast Guardsmen so they are able to deploy and perform their military duties.

For more information, visit http://www.navy.mil/, http://www.facebook.com/usnavy/, or http://www.twitter.com/usnavy/.

For more news from Naval Health Clinic Hawaii, visit http://www.navy.mil/.