Esthetic direct restorations in endodontically treated anterior teeth.

Composite resins are the most commonly used materials in restorative dentistry. When first introduced in dental practice, they began to change the esthetic approach to anterior teeth treatments. At first they simply represented a 'white' alternative to unesthetic materials. Today, the clinician can select different materials depending on the characteristics required, such as opalescence, fluorescence, translucency, transparency, viscosity, elasticity, and, obviously, shade. It is no longer a mere matter of selecting the right single syringe. The thicknesses of one or several materials may drastically change the final outcome. A three-dimensional way of planning restorations has overcome the old monochromatic bi-dimensional one. Sound tooth preservation, affordable treatments, and reparability are only a few of the advantages of using composite resins. Clinicians generally consider non-vital anterior teeth a big challenge from an esthetic point of view and they very often prefer to treat them with full or partial indirect ceramic restorations. In the present article, through the analysis of several step-by-step clinical cases, the authors point out that direct restorations could lead to successful esthetic outcomes if correct techniques are applied in order to make up for the differences between vital and non-vital teeth.