Dental remakes cost more than chair time. Learn how material selection affects efficiency, predictability, and long-term practice performance.
Most dentists agree that remakes are frustrating, but many underestimate just how costly they really are. A remake is rarely just about replacing a crown or redoing a restoration. It affects scheduling, team morale, patient trust, and long-term profitability. In many cases, the root cause is not clinical skill or digital design, but material selection.
As dentistry becomes more workflow driven, material consistency has emerged as a major factor in reducing avoidable remakes.
Why Remakes Are More Than a Chairside Issue
When a restoration does not seat properly or requires repeated adjustments, the immediate cost is obvious. Extra chair time, additional lab fees, and delayed treatment all add up. But the indirect costs often matter more.
Remakes disrupt the day. They push other patients behind schedule, increase stress for the team, and can reduce confidence in both the clinician and the practice. Over time, frequent remakes quietly erode efficiency.
Many dentists accept a certain remake rate as unavoidable. In reality, a large percentage of remakes can be traced back to material related issues.
Material Choice Plays a Bigger Role Than Most Realize
Digital dentistry has improved accuracy, but materials still determine how that accuracy translates into the final result. A perfect digital design can still fail if the impression material distorts, the restorative substrate behaves unpredictably, or the cement does not interact well with the surface.
Common material related causes of remakes include:
- impression distortion or tearing
- marginal inaccuracies
- inconsistent bonding performance
- unpredictable seating behavior
- excess adjustments during delivery
These issues are subtle. They may not appear in every case, which makes them easy to overlook. But over dozens or hundreds of procedures, their impact becomes significant.
Impression Accuracy Sets the Tone for Everything Else
Even in practices that use digital scanning, physical impressions remain common for certain cases. When impression materials are inconsistent, every downstream step is affected.
Distortion during removal, poor tear strength, or hydrophobic behavior around margins can lead to restorations that look acceptable on the model but fail intraorally. Dentists may compensate chairside, but those adjustments increase stress and reduce predictability.
This is why many clinicians prioritize impression materials that maintain dimensional stability and detail accuracy across cases, especially for crowns, bridges, and implant restorations. Reliable VPS impression materials, such as those used routinely for fixed prosthodontics, help reduce variability and lower the risk of remakes tied to marginal fit or contact issues.
Consistency Reduces Guesswork
One of the biggest contributors to remakes is inconsistency. When materials change frequently, either due to availability or cost substitutions, the team must constantly adapt.
A cement that works well with one zirconia formulation may behave differently with another. An impression material that performs well in one clinical situation may struggle in another. Each variable introduces uncertainty.
Practices that standardize materials where possible tend to experience fewer surprises. This does not mean using only one brand, but it does mean selecting materials that behave predictably across indications. Dentists who rely on dependable impression systems like high-accuracy VPS impression materials used for fixed restorationsoften see smoother seating appointments and fewer adjustments.
Remakes Affect Team Efficiency and Morale
Repeated remakes take a toll on the team. Assistants spend more time troubleshooting. Front desk staff manage rescheduling. Doctors feel pressure to “make it work” even when the result is less than ideal.
Over time, this affects morale. A practice that struggles with frequent remakes often feels rushed, reactive, and stressed. Reducing remakes improves not only efficiency, but also the daily working environment.
Patients Notice More Than We Think
Patients may not understand the technical reason behind a remake, but they notice delays and repeated visits. Even when handled professionally, remakes can reduce confidence.
From a patient’s perspective, predictable treatment feels competent and reassuring. Fewer remakes mean smoother experiences, shorter treatment timelines, and higher satisfaction.
Material Selection as a Risk Management Strategy
Choosing materials is not just about preference or price. It is a form of risk management. Materials that behave consistently reduce clinical risk, scheduling risk, and reputational risk.
Dentists who evaluate materials based on performance data, workflow compatibility, and long term reliability often see better outcomes. Over time, this approach saves more money than chasing short term cost savings.
Conclusion
Remakes are expensive, not only financially, but operationally and emotionally. While no practice can eliminate remakes entirely, many can significantly reduce them by paying closer attention to material selection.
In modern dentistry, efficiency is built on predictability. Choosing materials that perform consistently across workflows helps reduce remakes, improve team morale, and deliver a better experience for patients.
