Using implants to replace a patient’s missing front tooth

Hitesh Panchal presents a recent case where a patient with a missing front tooth required dental implants and Invisalign treatment.

In early 2019, a male in his late 30s came into the practice. He’d spent many years suffering with the loss of a front tooth and dental crowding within this rest of his mouth. This was causing the gentleman significant distress that was affecting his daily life, he needed it addressing as soon as possible.

Within our clinic, Dental at MediacityUK, we’re lucky to have a team of professionals with varying areas of expertise. Luckily for this particular patient, two of those areas are implants and Invisalign. Therefore we could combine both specialities to improve his smile whilst using state-of-the-art technology and the best equipment available on the market.

Aligning the smile

The first steps were using our 3D scanner, which can simulate a smile to the patient and gives us the opportunity to adjust it to their requirements before any treatment takes place. Once we’d established exactly the ‘look’ our patient was after, we then worked backwards, starting with Invisalign.

Because of Invisalign’s impeccable accuracy and the beauty of working with modern technology, I was able to give measurements for the space for the implant to the nearest millimetre. In this case 7mm. Working within these specific parameters stimulates the perfect positioning of the tooth. The patient wore Invisalign for five months to attain the maximum benefits of straightening and repositioning. This of course included regular checks to ensure the teeth were behaving (Figures below)!

‘Impressive’ implants

During the fifth month, we inserted the implant. We always use Straumann implants. I believe they offer the most innovative products on the market and their service constantly impresses us.

We kept the Invisalign…