The main objective of any direct restoration is to rehabilitate the functions of the dental structure, including that of resistance to masticatory forces and of the aesthetic aspect, in order to achieve an optimal treatment plan for each patient. At present, the new limits of dental esthetics have changed due to the evolution of human society’s esthetic concept, and the restorative therapies performed to restore esthetic function are among the most solicited in dentistry. In today’s dentistry, many revolutionary changes have modified the use and the indications of new types of dental materials because the modern means of assessing the three-dimensional morphology of both dental hard tissues and direct restorative dental materials have emerged.
To ensure the expected esthetic and beneficial therapeutic results, the use of new dental materials requires correlating the patient’s particularities with the characteristics, properties, advantages, disadvantages, indications, contraindications, and limitations of multiple restorative dental materials currently marketed. The application of esthetic dental therapies represents a great responsibility in managing the consequences of their use. Some patient requests are considered natural (the restoration of indentations, of changes in color, shape, position, etc.), but some treatments may contradict the conventional dental esthetics (making dental and gingival tattoos, tooth staining, dental grinding in accordance to specific requirements, etc.). The effective minimally invasive therapy applied in
the present-day oral care should be an updated mentality, which should be based on the modern understanding of the histopathology of dental lesions, the progress in the diagnostic technologies, and the utilization of the new types of bioactive dental materials.