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