INFOMEDIX ITALIAN DENTISTRY | Sharing knowledge | 1 2023
Sdt Alberto Battistelli
Why does a dentist need to know how to model like a dental technician? What technique can help him to understand and bring out a beautiful and functional anatomy from his hands?
The answer is simple AFG: anatomic functional geometry.
How is it possible to make such a peremptory statement? Soon said! In 30 years AFG has received unequivocal international recognition, having been published in 13 languages. It is also the first dental technique to have received recognition from the Italian State which awarded it as “Italian Excellence in the World” with an official dedicated ceremony in the Isma room of the Senate on 11 July 2019. Let us now analyze carefully why it is the most suitable for dentists and the closest to the criterion of normal human anatomy that we find in medical texts! AFG, unlike all the techniques from overseas and northern Europe, does not invent forms to make them correspond to tools to be sold in the “gnathological” field. AFG is just a system of observing natural form and transforming it into simple numerical and geometric codes. What does this mean? It means that science does not invent but discovers! Everything already exists! We just need to know how it is made and how it works! 30 years of measuring teeth on natural mouths has allowed us to discover human averages up to a maximum margin of error of 0.5 millimeters. What are these codes for, you ask? To guide the hands and instruments in the hands of the dentist and dental technician towards a beautiful, natural and functional shape. Great artists always had a project behind their works! A geometric mathematical project that reduces errors and remakes! The latter are the plague of the modern economy of a studio and a laboratory that wants to define itself as efficient. The “invisible background” of the form Kandinsky said is the only way to understand it and reproduce it faithfully. It is the cerebral basis that guides the most refined gesture, removing it from the constraints of individual creativity to bring it into the hands of anyone!
Transforming teeth into simple numbers and simple geometries makes the shape that otherwise appears very complex understandable. Thus, extraordinary repetitions typical of human nature are also discovered which are not found in previous techniques, which are too based on TMJ data which embryologically speaking have nothing to do with the joints. The shape of the tooth is genetically programmed, only its position has relationships with the bones and other surrounding tissues. Genetics is pure mathematics! One small mistake and everything goes wrong! In the same way the teeth are programmed to fit together and move with a defined numerical code that only AFG has well identified! Ridges, furrows, etc. they have trends that have precise directions and meanings, but it’s not just that!
Even the angles of the slopes and the vestibular and palatal surfaces have a strong functional significance if we think according to the dynamics of the food bolus rather than the usual, sometimes absurd, determinants of the TMJ. The teeth of previous techniques always took inspiration from the latter and deformed natural shapes to make them correspond to mathematically approximate theories and tools with a “seasoning” of “thousands” of contact points. Thinking as in tailoring AFG guides the hands or the mouse indifferently towards the beauty and functionality of nature. Teeth function predominantly when they do not touch each other and this is where the shape plays its decisive role in the individual’s survival. Modeling in wax is as fundamental for the doctor as it is for the dental technician, brain-hand coordination is acquired in a refined way through the meticulous application of drops of wax which with the AFG procedure become easy even for the dentist who has never done it . You kill “two birds with one stone”: refinement of the gesture which is then transportable on the scalpel as well as on the turbine and memorization of the natural human anatomy.
Transport on aesthetic materials, ceramic composite etc. then becomes easy, as is the digital application. But it doesn’t end there, AFG allows you to think like an archaeologist and with its codes you can trace the dimensions of the lost teeth with a margin of error of a few tenths of a millimetre. The professional authority that results from this knowledge removes the professional from many embarrassing situations and drastically reduces the need for remakes.
During the first visit it will then be easier to get higher quotes accepted even for a simple filling which will no longer be such but will become a full-fledged restoration.
