Pamper Your Teeth

A new design by Dentium – the Superline, boasts a number of advantages over other implants. You can see some of the highly favourable characteristics of the implant in the picture below.

As an implant practitioner, I find these characteristics very helpful to my successful placement of implants. Unlike their European counterparts, many Korean manufacturers are very receptive to user feedback. For this reason, we see their designs evolving and improving much faster than many US and European systems. Of course, some of the European manufacturers are learning their lesson, but at the moment, they can’t beat the Koreans in terms of pricing.

I placed my first Dentium Superline yesterday. As I didn’t carry out the procedure at my own clinic, I do not have ready access to radiographic records that I can publish.

The patient was a lady in her late 50s. 2 months ago, I extracted her lower right molar which held a fractured post crown. As the patient has delayed extraction for years, a considerable amount of soft tissue has formed around the tooth fragments. I removed the tooth fragments completely without surgery and let the wound heal for 2 month.

Upon entry yesterday, I discovered that the defect left by the diseased tooth was still present. I cleaned out all the remnant soft tissue and the irregularly shaped defect was almost 6mm across the widest part. I drilled into the defect to a depth of 8mm from the crestal bone. The inferior dental nerve was more than 1cm deep.

After finishing the apical end of the hole with a 5mm drill, I passively checked the diameter of the coronal (top) part of the hole with a 7mm drill. The top part of the hole was just shy of 7mm. I then asked for a 7x8mm implant. It went into smoothly and seated firmly at a torque of almost 50Ncm.

Dentium’s implants come without fixture mounts. It could be an advantage or a disadvantage. When placing multiple implants, the surgeon would want to align them. This can be a little difficult without fixture mounts. For single implants, it’s not a problem at all. The mount becomes a liability when the implant does not have much initial stability due to poor quality bone. Removing the mount may disturb the implant and cause displacement.

With the amount of initial stability I had in this case, I confidently placed a healing abutment and sutured the site. I’ll report on the restoration part in about 6 weeks.