Mini Dental Implants

Mini Dental Implants for Upper Crowns

This is part II of the post... The mini dental implants have been placed and allowed to heal.  Impressions were taken and sent to the crown and bridge lab for resin crowns to be fabricated.  Resin crowns were selected instead of traditional PFM upper crowns due to patient $$.  I kept the model work so that over time when the patient is better able to afford the Porcelain Upper Crowns we can just send the models back to the lab and skip one step in the fabrication process.

The upper crowns were tried in over the mini implants.  Our patient approved the look and color.  They are now cemented in place. 
Close up of premolar crowns
Single Premolar mini implant upper crowns (2 minis were placed to hold the crown in place)
Chewing view of premolar upper crowns over a total of 5 mini dental implants. 

 I have had lots of dentists ask me and even tell me that mini implants do not work in the upper arch or that they can't work in soft bone.  My personal experience has been if mini implants are placed in the upper arch they just need time to heal like any other size implant.  Don't be in a hurry to get the final product...you can only go as fast as the mini will integrate into the bone. 

Over the past 2 years and close to a 1000 mini implants being placed I have had one case fail in the upper arch.  It was two minis used to support a upper molar crown.  They went in solid but over 6 weeks they did not stay that way.  I believe it was either smoking or the patient functioning on them that was the cause of the failure. 

Paresh B Patel DDS Mooresville NC

http://www.dentalminiimplant.com or http://www.lkndds.com

 

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.  

  

   

 

Mini Dental Implant Training ~Education ~Seminars~Lab Consulting

Todd Shatkin DDS, the go to guy for mini dental implant education & the dentist who trained me, is having a 2 day advanced course in Las Vegas March 12 - 13. 

Dr. Shatkin asked me to present some cases in Chicago last week.  It was an honor for me.  Clinical cases that I did over the past year were shown to highlight what can be done with mini dental implants.   With the correct education and lab support from his father, Sam Shatkin DDS MD, I feel very confident that most conscientious restorative dentists can become good mini dental implant providers. 

I have been given the opportunity to speak again in Vegas and look forward to meeting everyone excited about mini dental implants and their ability to change the lives of both dentists and patients.

Mini Dental Implants vs Traditional Implants

The next story is about a patient of mine named Storie....how bizarre.  Well actually the patient is the wife of a patient of mine who had placed mini dental implants on to replace his existing partial denture. 

She had broken her tooth.

X ray of broken premolar #13

I gave her the option of a root canal, post and a crown.  I thought it was a good option but she had it in her mind to take the tooth out and have implants.  We talked about traditional implants but she wanted what her husband had been offered - mini dental implants and crowns.   

I took the tooth out with some peritomes to preserve the facial bone as much as possible .

 X ray of the tooth removed and the socket preservation with De-mineralized  & Mineralized Freeze Dried Bone (6 months later)

The area had healed in quite well and I was pleased with the amount of bone that was preserved in both the Facial/Lingual dimension as well as height. 

3 Intra Lock Mini Dental Implants were placed to act as the roots for the missing premolar and molar (#13 and #14)

As you can see the procedure was very atraumatic to the tissue as no flap was made.  Notice hardly any blood in the sites where the mini implants were placed. 

I standard impression was taken and the case was sent to Valdi and Shatkin FIRST Lab for 2 PFM Crowns.  The thing I like about FIRST Labs is that you don't get charged for the lab analogs for the master model or the 2nd pour for contacts.  

Not to mention that the crowns look good and more importantly fit well on the mini implants.

I dry fitted the mini dental implant crowns in the patients mouth...let her approve the color and aesthetics.  She approved them and we cemented them.  Overall it was a slam dunk case.