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Review
. 2018 Dec 29;17(1):18.
doi: 10.3390/md17010018.

Alginate Materials and Dental Impression Technique: A Current State of the Art and Application to Dental Practice

Gabriele Cervino  1 , Luca Fiorillo  2 , Alan Scott Herford  3 , Luigi Laino  4 , Giuseppe Troiano  5 , Giulia Amoroso  6 , Salvatore Crimi  7 , Marco Matarese  8 , Cesare D'Amico  9 , Enrico Nastro Siniscalchi  10 , Marco Cicciù  11
Affiliations
Review

Alginate Materials and Dental Impression Technique: A Current State of the Art and Application to Dental Practice

Gabriele Cervino et al. Mar Drugs. .

Abstract

Hydrocolloids were the first elastic materials to be used in the dental field. Elastic impression materials include reversible (agar-agar), irreversible (alginate) hydrocolloids and synthetic elastomers (polysulfides, polyethers, silicones). They reproduce an imprint faithfully, providing details of a high definition despite the presence of undercuts. With the removal of the impression, being particularly rich in water, the imprints can deform but later adapt to the original shape due to the elastic properties they possess. The advantages of using alginate include the low cost, a better tolerability on the part of the patient, the ease of manipulation, the short time needed for execution, the instrumentation and the very simple execution technique and possibility of detecting a detailed impression (even in the presence of undercuts) in a single step. A comprehensive review of the current literature was conducted according to the PRISMA guidelines by accessing the NCBI PubMed database. Authors conducted a search of articles in written in English published from 2008 to 2018. All the relevant studies were included in the search with respect to the characteristics and evolution of new marine derived materials. Much progress has been made in the search for new marine derived materials. Conventional impression materials are different, and especially with the advent of digital technology, they have been suffering from a decline in research attention over the last few years. However, this type of impression material, alginates (derived from marine algae), have the advantage of being among the most used in the dental medical field.

Keywords: alginates; impression materials; marine algae; marine derivates.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors report no conflicts of interest related to this study.

Figures

Scheme 1
Scheme 1
Prisma Flow diagram.
Figure 1
Figure 1
Alginate automixer Cavex®, for alginate mixing.
Figure 2
Figure 2
Manual alginate impression material mixing, water and powder. Courtesy Prof M.C.
Figure 3
Figure 3
Manual alginate impression material mixing. Alginate on dental impression tray. Courtesy Prof M.C.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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