Prosthodontic and Surgical Treatment Planning
Treatment planning for dental implant reconstruction is a team concept. The restorative dentist and surgeon must both provide input to ensure optimal patient outcomes using a prosthetically driven treatment planning process. Failure to include the restorative dentist in the initial treatment planning phase could lead to prosthodontic failures as a result of a lack of restorability of the implant due to incorrect location, angulation problems, or compromised esthetic issues. Both clinicians (surgeon and restorative dentist) should communicate their preferences and be in agreement with respect to implant number and location. Oftentimes, it is helpful when the restorative dentist provides a surgical guide to assist with implant location and angulation. This prosthetic surgical guide differs from a CT‐generated surgical guide in that the restorative dentist may use a duplicate denture with a window trimmed away to indicate to the surgeon the range of area that should be used for implant placement. Surgical guides are not always necessary depending upon the location of the implants, and the experience and skill of the surgeon, but can be very helpful for complex cases and esthetic zone cases, especially those involving multiple implants. Recently, there has been greater attention paid to computer‐assisted treatment planning, surgical guide fabrication, computer‐guided surgery, and the use of navigation techniques. Currently, no multicenter prospective clinical trials exist that indicate a statistically significant superiority of the use of such computer‐assisted and navigation techniques over conventional freehand implant placement techniques. Although pre‐implant CT or CBCT imaging is performed commonly, it is most beneficial when the treatment planning sites may have significant anatomical limitations (e.g., proximity to nerve or sinus), or following augmentation procedures (e.g., sinus lift, ridge augmentation).
Table 3.4. Differences between static implant guides and dynamic implant navigation
Sources: Based on Block and Emery [11]; Block et al. [12].
Static guides | Dynamic navigation | |
---|---|---|
Protocol | Surgeon uses the CT‐generated surgical stent to make sequential osteotomies, with direct visualization | Surgeon uses the navigation screen to make sequential osteotomies, with minimal direct visualization of the drills in patient's mouth |
Use of stent or a clip | CT‐generated surgical stent with metal sleeve | CBCT scan obtained with the clip that contains three metallic fiducial markers, placed on the patient's teeth in an area that is not indicated for surgery |
Implant positioning | Implants placed in the predetermined position. Intraoperative change in position is not permitted | Real‐time visualization of the implant placement. Ability to make corrections as needed |
Implant system | A surgical setup specific to the implant system is required. Unable to change implant system once the CT surgical stent has been fabricated | Compatible with any implant system. Also allows for change in the implant size during its placement |
Irrigation of the drills | Difficult to irrigate the drills during the procedure due to limited access to the bone, may increase heat production | Continuous irrigation of the drills during the procedure is possible |
Difficult access | Use of surgical stents can be challenging in patients with limited mouth opening, especially when placing an implant in the second molar site | Allows for placement of implants in patients with difficult access |
Learning curve | Likely use of a third party to plan the case | Variable learning curve to gain proficiency |
Treatment planning addresses not only the location of implants, but also the ideal time interval between extraction and implant placement, immediate extraction and implant placement, time to implant loading, or immediate loading protocols, and time interval to final prosthetic restoration. All of these factors may play a role in the initial implant integration and primary and secondary implant stability. The alveolar ridge undergoes hard and soft tissue dimensional changes after tooth extraction. Several studies have evaluated the amount of bone loss that occurs over time after extraction. These studies show a loss of horizontal width between 30% and 50% at 3–12 months after extraction [13–15]. Immediate and early implant placement has become an accepted technique to attempt to offset the impact of these anatomical changes. However, a study [16] assessed 21 immediate implants in 18 patients, and, upon re‐entry at 4 months, found bone resorption around the implants: approximately 50% bone loss on the buccal surface and 30% on the lingual surface. Another study [17] found similar outcomes and concluded that immediate implant placement does not prevent alveolar ridge resorption. Although these studies suggest that bony resorption continues to take place regardless of when the implant is placed after extraction, there is no evidence to suggest that early or immediate implant placement techniques have a significantly lower (or higher) rate of osseointegration success than those placed in a more delayed fashion. However, prospective randomized clinical studies are needed with clearly defined long‐term outcome measures in order to help guide the choice of appropriate implant treatment protocols.
The time interval to loading of dental implants is also debated in the literature, and presumably has an effect on the overall success of implant osseointegration. One systematic review [18] examined the time to