Guided Surgery
Guided Implant Surgery has led to less invasive mouth surgery when placing dental implants, reduced surgical procedures and post treatment discomfort.
Guided implant placement has the benefit of placing implants in an ideal location and often in places where it would not be possible without the use of a guided stent. The dental implants are more likely to be placed more snugly in the bone with a higher level of stability.
This means that in suitable situations, implants can be placed at the same time as removing a tooth (especially with the use of PRGF technology), or fitting a prosthetic tooth or teeth linked to an implant or implants. This is known as immediate implant placement and immediate restoring or loading.
These techniques reduce the number of mouth surgery treatments that patients need to experience and reduce the amount of post-treatment pain and discomfort.
Guided implant surgery involves the use of specialist instruments and techniques to accurately place implants in a meticulously planned position. It takes a lot of careful and in-depth planning in order to carry out guided implant surgery, so is only carried out by experienced clinicians like Paul.
We first need to take a 3D dental x-ray scan, a cone beam CT (CBCT). This allows us to see a 3D image of your jaw and assess bone volume and anatomy. We also take digital impressions using our iTero intra-oral scanner.
This allows Paul to expertly plan exactly where he wants to place an implant, determine what length and shape of implant to place and the steps he will take to do so. We then also upload the digital impressions onto coDiagnostiX implant planning software and align it with the CBCT scan. Paul then designs a guided stent which is digitally printed and used on the day of surgery. The guided stent slots over your teeth and has holes in exactly the locations where we want the implant to be placed. A specialised kit of guided surgery instruments is used to allow us to prepare a hole in the jaw in the ideal position, to the correct depth and at a suitable angulation to restore the implant with the aim of providing a highly aesthetic and long-lasting result.
If you would like to know if you could benefit from this kind of treatment, please ask for Sophie, our dental implant treatment co-ordinator.