Digital Orthodontics Providing a Contemporary Treatment Solution 2025

A Professional Message from the Author
This is a book that I am hoping will rejuvenate your professional career and boost it to yet an undiscovered level that you couldn’t think was possible, igniting an uncountable interest in providing your preferred specialism in a new way. Presenting all this collated information in the form of a textbook has been daunting, challenging, and extremely time-consuming, and this expression could only be described as an understatement to the dedication put towards delivering a textbook to the highest level possible and on time. However, it has been nothing by my pleasure to deliver it to you. Writing this book meant endless hours of research, collaboration with other experts in the specialism, and a test of my character. I have completely changed my outlook on the profession, having experienced nothing but support and witnessed a spirit of collaboration and help. I am also hoping that once you progress through this book, you will discover a keen passion for delivering the highest standards of orthodontics in the most contemporaneous manner possible, a revolutionary method that involves the newest technology available in medicine. I am sharing this textbook with a newly found vigour, and being my third textbook, you might notice a more mature way of writing. I will let you lead on how you would like to use and interpret this book. You might own this textbook for knowledge-building, confidence-building, or simply for inspiration to alter your techniques in a way that will ultimately benefit your clients. You might want to embrace the textbook as an eye-opener to the plethora of technologies that are available, and you might not have had the time to reflect on and validate its use in practice. I am sincerely hoping that if you have found practice challenging at times and have wondered whether you have the energy to sustain it long-term, this textbook will empower you to build that surge, revalidation, and the finding of a new self, as ultimately we do not know what tomorrow holds. Why not build that high-end, tech-based practice that you have always wished for? Why not fall in favour of embracing the new technologies? Why not be convinced about the benefits of different technologies, perhaps the same ones that your younger peers are already convinced of?

I have personally decided to handcraft this textbook as there was none like it, and I genuinely felt you and any other clinician practising orthodontics might benefit from having it in hand, on the shelf, or simply knowing of its existence. Let’s be bold and help push the boundaries of our profession forward! With inspiration, respect, and a deep sense of partnership,

Stefan Abela

This book has been planned and executed with the primary intention of offering the most up-to-date, readily accessible guidance on the techniques, equipment, and concepts needed to provide a fully digitised journey to a modern patient seeking orthodontic treatment. It also describes the clinical procedures, techniques, and how to embrace the new technologies to provide the best clinical delivery. This book outlines the processes of how the key clinical stages can be provided in a digital format to render the patient’s experience completely contemporary. These key
stages include clinical and radiographic image acquisition, orthodontic appliance design, and fabrication. This book also provides invaluable information on the latest intraoral scanners, software programmes, hardware, materials, lasers, 3D printing, and CAD/CAM technology. The second section describes the future evolution expected within the specialty. This aspect of orthodontics like other specialties has been gaining an unprecedented momentum and will undoubtedly play an ever-increasing important role, if not a completely essential one. This book will be extremely relevant to undergraduate, postgraduate, and practising clinicians alike wanting to acquire more knowledge on how to convert their practice to a digital one.
Cambridge, UK Stefan Abela
October 2025