Options For Single Or Multiple Tooth Replacement

Good morning and welcome to the Shatkin F.I.R.S.T.® Monday morning minute.

Hi, I’m Dr. Todd Shatkin, and welcome to this Monday morning Minute. Today we’re going to talk about your two options for a single or multiple tooth replacement. Many of you have tried the first technique, which I developed back in 2002 to replace a single tooth or multiple teeth in just one visit. This is fabricated implant restoration and surgical technique. That’s what the acronym F.I.R.S.T. Stands for, which, of course, is the name of our company, Shatkin F.I.R.S.T.®. And what this is, is the use of a surgical guide stent and a finished porcelain crown or multiple crowns being made in advance from your good quality polyvinyl impressions and good quality X rays or CT scan.

What you do is you send all of that in to Shatkin F.I.R.S.T.®. And of course, Shatkin F.I.R.S.T.® Is the only laboratory that’s authorized to use this patented procedure. So you send it all into Shatkin F.I.R.S.T.® With the shade, the type of restoration you want and the type of implants you choose. And what we will do is we will plan the case. Either myself, Dr. Powers, will plan the case in advance, determining where to place the implants, what length and size to place them.

And then what we’ll do is make a surgical guide stent to fit over your impression model, whether it’s a digital impression or a polyvinyl impression, whatever the case may be, we’ll make this surgical guide. In this particular case, we’re talking about a single molar tooth with two mini implants, as you can see here. And then once that surgical guide is made, we’ll design the porcelain crown to fit exactly over the implants, where they will be in the preplanned position.

So once you place these two mini implants into the patient’s jaw, you can then cement the crown right over those implants. You’ll see underneath the crown, there’s two holes, which are the receivers of the two o ball implants that are placed in the bone. This is the first technique, and this is a great procedure for patients, for you and for your patients. When you want to save chair time, you want to avoid having a temporary restoration in place. It just makes things a whole lot easier. It’s great for anterior teeth, posterior teeth, and it’s good for up to three or four units of a fixed bridge once you get over three or four units.

I recommend doing it in two stages for a number of reasons, primarily because it gets a little bit harder to line all those implants up perfectly and have the restoration fit all at once. Now, keep in mind, I’ve done this with Roundhouses, the first technique, where you place ten to twelve implants and cement a permanent bridge all in one visit. So it’s really up to you and how comfortable you feel about doing it in one stage. But it is a great procedure. It’s a huge practice builder your patients will leave your office blown away. They won’t believe that they came in in less than a half an hour and had one or more teeth replaced in one single visit.

However, if you’re one of those dentists who chooses to do it in two stages, it’s perfectly fine as well. You can go ahead and use the surgical guide stent to place the implants and then go ahead and take your final impression of the implants in place and make a temporary restoration on those using our blackout shims or our healing caps, which was what I recommend. Snap those little white healing caps on the implants, form a temporary over that, and let the patient go and come back a couple of weeks later for the permanent cementation.

So those are your two options with the mini implant restorations. Now we have our third option now available, which is the use of our True Lock abutments, which we spoke about a couple of weeks ago, where you can place the implant and snap on one of the true Lock abutments, either the long or the short, depending on the vertical space available and the width of the space. So if it’s a bicuspid or molar, I’ll usually use our short, wider implants. If it’s an anterior tooth, like a lateral central or lower incisor, certainly I’ll use the narrow long tulac abutments. Those can be prepped in the mouth, as you know, and then you can take an impression directly of those abutments, send it to the laboratory, and we will make a nice beautiful crown with a nice emergence profile.

So now you have multiple options to choose from when you’re deciding what type of restoration and the technique you want to use. If you have any questions at all about these different techniques, please give me a call. You can always reach me. You can call our office number at 884-Shatkin. And one of our salespeople will be happy to help you as well, or our customer service people.

But if you need direct advice, just reach out to me or any of our friendly staff and we’ll be happy to help you at any time. And you can also attend one of our upcoming seminars to learn more about all these different techniques, plus a whole lot more. And thank you for joining me on this Monday Morning Minute. We’ll see you next time.