Zest SaturnO-rings for Mini Dental Implants ~ Upgrade your Snap in Dentures
After the hundreds of mini dental implants I have placed to secure upper and lower dentures I would have thought there could be a better snap for the O-ball attachment.
But thanks to Paul Zuest there is one now, the SaturnO-ring. Released in late October it offers up to 30' of angle correction. The standard o-rings that come with most mini dental implants(Intra Lock, IMTEC MDI, OCO Biomedical) offer around 5' .
It has a TiN coated race that allows the rubber
o-ring to rotate freely inside the metal housing.
Wow…great engineering and a great idea… I wish I had though of that.
Picture on right shows the race pivoted up inside the housing.
Zest offers a standard size Saturno for a 2.25mm Ball and a Micro size Saturno for a 1.8mm Ball attachment.
Standard on left and
Micro on right
There is also a neat little o-ring tool so when you need to replace those worn out black rings you don't damage them with a sharp dental instrument getting them in the metal housing.
I had just the case to try out these new Zest SaturnO-rings. My patient had 6 mini dental implants (Intra Lock) placed in the upper jaw to secure in his full upper denture plate. As much as we tired to make it easy for him to remove it was just too tight. He struggled to get it in or out. Some of the issue I am certain was the divergent angles of the mini dental implants. I fitted him with one of his bag full of old dentures with a lab processed Molloplast soft liner over the 6 mini dental implants.
He was comfortable with that molloplast liner and it did provide some grab on the mini dental implants but of course I wanted to give the SaturnO-rings a try.
I reamed out his horseshoe upper denture, taking away the old standard housings.
In the mouth were fitted 6 micro housings, they were picked up inside the upper denture with some self cure pink acrylic. They worked great! I thought I was done. But darn it, he still could not get that thing in and out like he wanted to a few days into it. Poor guy was just getting older and I wanted to make him happy. I think most of it was he just wanted to feel like he could accomplish this task for himself.
So I reamed them out again and decided to try the idea of using the larger SaturnO-ring on the mini implants to give him some retention but not quite as much.
The SaturnO rings snapped over the 1.8mm ball like I expected and had less retention. There were 3 mini implants that touched each other with the housings so I placed 3 standard housings for those areas.
We picked them up just like normal. Less retention…yes. Enough retention? Charlie said two thumbs up. He was able for the first time now to put them in and out….without a Mirror! Even I was impressed. He was smiling ear to ear.
Thanks to some clever engineering at Zest Anchors we as have another choice to make patients lives better with mini dental implants.
Paresh B Patel Dentist Mooresville NC
Mini Dental Implants SaturnO rings for Intra Lock IMTEC OCO Biomedical