Protecting the adjacent tooth during a crown prep
OslerPress guide · 4 min read
On the posterior restoration sheets, damage that polishing removes without changing contour or contact is acceptable; gross damage or alteration is critically deficient. No numeric width is published.
Figure 1. Leave a thin sliver of enamel to break the contact.
No contact scores as within. Any mark that needs more than polishing scores as outside.
How to avoid it
Open the proximal surface inside the tooth with a thin tapered diamond and leave a sliver of enamel; a matrix band on the neighbor adds a guard. One student wrote that their Class II preps sometimes “completely destroy the adjacent tooth”.