My next patient was a young 27 year old. She had such a lovely personality; but she would not smile. How sad. Her story was typical….lost her teeth at a young age due and now wanted to do something just for her.
Photos of her missing teeth right and left sides.
On my first glance it looked like she had lots of bone to place implants. But on further investigation by doing some ridge mapping (the process where the dentist numbs the gum tissue and feels with a perio probe to see what is gum tissue and what is bone) it was determined that lots of bone had been lost over the years.
Bone grafting or bone splitting was presented as an option but not accepted.
The next alternative was to consider using mini dental implants to support a set of splinted or connected crowns.
Two mini implants were placed to act as roots for crowns. The crowns will be connected together to splint the mini implants together. On the right and left sides they will look like premolar teeth. Over time additional mini dental implants will be added to replace the molars.
Final x-ray of the mini dental implants in place.
Cone Bean Scan x-ray to show how thin the bone is and the mini dental implants all in bone to the floor of the sinus cavity. Without having mini implants this case would not have an alternative option for most patients to consider.
I will finish the post once the premolar crowns come back from the dental lab and are cemented in place.
Paresh B Patel DDS
Mini Dental Implant Educational Seminar with Hands on Course
