Long Journey

This patient came to us with a mouthful of different restorations. Her lower arch was an old acrylic over bar all-on-4. The upper was bridges, and the bridges had root canals, which had begun to fail. The teeth were shifting, and things were breaking.

We pride ourselves on being able to do ‘hybrids’ or all-on-x restorations without the patient going without teeth, but unfortunately for this patient, the only way we could get her into temporaries was to extract the failing root canals, and let the bone heal. There was no other bone to access other than the bone that was being eaten by the failing root canals!

So we brought her in, took out the failing teeth, and did bone grafts, and we made her a printed temporary bridge. We used the existing teeth to support the teeth while the bone healed. Her only other option would have been zygoma dental implants, and she did not want to go through that!

So 4 months later, we took that bridge off and placed implants into the grafted and healed bone, and then converted her into an implant supported provisional. We let that heal for 4 months, then took on the challenge of restoring her bottom bar. Unfortunately her bottom all-on-4 was an implant level restoration, so we had to convert it to MUA level to restore it. We made a titanium reinforced lower hybrid, and titanium reinforced upper hybrid. The results? Spectacular!

Not every case is easy, using old implants, dealing with previously heroic work with bridges and root canals, and collapsed bites make these cases much harder. My staff often jokes that we only treat the hard cases, here, and sometimes I believe them!

But when we are able to ‘re-engineer’ the smile and mouth, the results are great – a perfect blend of science, art, and engineering.

Thanks for trusting us with your smile, bite, function, and confidence! For more information about implants, options for restoring your smile, or the differences between fixed and removable implant solutions, follow us on Instagram @FantaskiSmiles and send a DM with any questions. To schedule a consultation, please call (678) 845-8658.