Communication is vital to produce natural looking metal ceramic crowns.

Many in the dental profession believe that accurate shade matching of the single anterior tooth is impossible. Fabricating an anterior porcelain crown to accurately match surrounding teeth is the most difficult task in our industry. However, it is not impossible. For many years, I took custom shades for a large dental group, and while there were many successes, there were also many failures. In one incident, the dentist, his team and I all agreed on a Vita Lumin A-2 for a patient. I attended the try-in. To everyone's surprise, the crown did not match the patient's natural teeth. After taking a new shade and delivering the new crown, the shade matched more closely, but still "no cigar." This particular failure resulted in the loss of a patient. Unfortunately, this was one of several incidents involving a mismatched shade and unsatisfied patient. These experiences caused me to question the techniques I was using. From them, I developed a technique for taking shades which could be shared with others to eliminate the frustrations we have all encountered.