The efficient post

Clinical efficiency is a desirable objective for dental practitioners.

We seek efficiency in several ways: we want to be able to provide a service using simple techniques, with the smallest number of materials and in the fewest number of steps possible; we want treatment to be resolved in the fewest number of office visits, with high long-term success rates and clinically simple, effective, and predictable re-treatment options. Fiber posts have provided advantages in all of these aspects.

Traditional approaches to providing a post/core restoration have required at least 2 office visits for a cast post/core with concomitant anxiety about passivity of fit, or the insertion of prefabricated metal posts that offered the advantage of assured fit and 1-visit convenience, but still threaten tooth longevity because of inherently poor stress transfer properties1-5 and irretrievability when com- pared with fiber posts.