Adjusting lab work that doesn't quite fit

Hands up whoever has ever done this.You get a job back from the laboratory — say a crown or a chrome partial. You try it in and it sort of fits but not quite. It rocks just a little and doesn't go all the way down.

You think you can see what the problem is so you pull out a hand piece and start adjusting. It's better but still not quite right. You adjust again. And again. And again.

20 minutes later it sort of fits but you're not delighted with it but you insert it anyway.

I'm going to suggest to you that any piece of work that has been adjusted to get it to fit will always be an inferior job. What I would do is the moment it doesn't fit is take a new impression and start again.

Well done laboratory work done on a well taken impression just drops into place. It's not fair on the patient to give them a compromise job.

A while ago I was in a practice where they were on their fifth adjustment appointment for a chrome framework that didn't quite fit. What a monumental waste of time.

The second thing I would suggest is that if your redo rate is more than 1 or 2 percent you need to look at your preps, your impressions and your lab.