How are hybrid screw-retained implant dentures placed at Smart Smile Dentistry in Gainesville, FL?
At Smart Smile Dentistry in Gainsville, Florida, the process starts with a detailed examination of your oral health to determine the feasibility of giving you a screw-retained hybrid implant denture. Our expert dentist will take measurements of teeth and gums on both jaws and make physical models of them for precision manufacture of the denture and its support system. A digital impression of your teeth will be made, which will then be fed into a specialized software to plan the placement of four or more implants into your jawbone. This includes the locations and sizes of the implants, and design of the titanium bar framework that is going to hold your new denture.
Once the treatment plan has been finalized, your dentist in our Gainesville location will place four or more titanium implants at chosen locations in your jawbone. Your dentist will wait for about 3-6 months to allow the implants to come into close contact with the surrounding jaw bone. This process, known as osseointegration, occurs naturally with titanium structures and bone cells from the surrounding bone actually start growing into the surface of the metal thus providing a very strong natural bond. In the meantime, the metal framework is milled out of titanium according to the plan with a precision of a few micrometers.
This is done using CAD/CAM facilities. Your denture is fabricated over the titanium bar framework according to the measurements already taken. Now your (hybrid) screw-retained denture is ready for placement. The bar framework contains the necessary number of access holes at chosen locations which allows the framework to be screwed onto abutments on the implants. The experts will then fill the access holes with composite resin filling material that perfectly matches the replacement teeth on your denture.