Mini Dental Implants to solve problems
I got a phone call last night from a Dentist friend of mine in Buffalo NY (one of the worlds best respected Mini Dental Implant clinicians). He had a patient of his from years ago that had a Resin Bonded Bridge that had now failed.
She was an interesting young lady in grad school at UNC-Chapel Hill….of course she was in tears that she had lost her front tooth.
What to do? I got her numb and sounded the bone in the missing tooth area…very thin…hardly any bone left to work with in the Lip to roof of the mouth direction.
Knowing full well that this patient would end up back in the office of the guy who has restored the most mini implants in the US I felt a bit of pressure to get it as correct as possible.
The patient agreed to let me put a mini dental implant in to hold her resin bonded bridge in place until she could get back home and then have the permanent crown made over the mini implant.
So I put in a 2.0 x 15mm Intra Lock mini implant to hold the bridge. It was fairly easy to grind out a hole in the pontic and fit it over the mini…whew!
I filled in the one wing that was not broken and the hole I created in the pontic with resin cement. She left so happy and excited. She had a tooth until a new one could be made for her.
Now for me to see how I did….
The assistant put my mentors patient in the iCAT CT chair and a few nail biting moments later I could see if I had threaded the bone and kept the mini in between the bone and not in air or soft tissue.
The Pan x-ray looked good, plenty of bone between the implant and the adjacent roots.
Now for the CT slices…
We had kept the 2.0mm implant within the 2.5mm of available bone…man was I glad.