What is a surgical guide in implantology?
A surgical guide in implantology serves to translate the prosthetically planned position of an implant into a practical orientation for diagnostics and surgery. The guide supports the planning process, visualizes the desired implant axis and position, and can also be used for pilot drilling and marking the cortical emergence profile.
In modern implantology, a planning and/or surgical guide is an important communication tool for transferring the prosthetically appropriate implant position from the model to the clinical situation in the patient’s mouth.
Surgical guide from the lab: The easy way to a planning guide in implantology
It should be clear beforehand which diagnostic methods will be used as the basis for planning and how much the surgical guide will actually serve as surgical support. In many cases, a planning guide or orientation guide can also be fabricated in the lab using analogous processes. The starting point is a situational model, prosthetic planning, and a wax-up, from which a surgical guide for diagnostics and surgical orientation is created step by step.
Unlike fully digital workflows, this approach relies on classic dental laboratory techniques. This makes it particularly interesting for dental practices and laboratories that want to produce a simple surgical guide in the lab.
