Fabricating fixed restorations designed to accept and retain a future partial denture requires multidisciplinary skills and a true understanding of the principals of partial denture design. As a full service laboratory providing cast removable partial dentures for over half a century, we have the knowledge and experience necessary to successfully construct your “combination” cases.

Before we begin our multi-departmental process, we survey, design and tripod the working cast with an orientation pin for the optimal path of insertion of the partial denture. To take advantage of any existing bilateral undercuts and rest areas it is important that we begin with full arch impressions; quadrant impressions should never be used for the C & B phase of a combination case.

When we produce combination cases we have the advantage of designing our crown or bridgework to accommodate a partial and maximize both function and aesthetics. We survey our C & B work throughout the process for proper positioning of rest seats, undercuts and guide planes. This attention to detail ensures both optimum retention and natural aesthetics.

The most ideally designed fixed/removable combination case can be a failure in the eyes of the patient however, if the shade of the porcelain restoration, partial denture teeth and the adjacent natural dentition do not match. To eliminate this problem we select the denture teeth before we begin our C & B work and use the teeth as our shade guide while building the porcelain. Because we cannot change the shade of denture teeth we match our porcelain to the teeth.