Dental Implants: Maintaining Current Bone Levels

when doing the copings have the lab put small ovals or teardrop buttons on mesal and dital sides for retention than reline with soft reliner material work great

Why make domes? Locator attacments will be much more retentive and the cost to you should be about the same.

Locators are relatively cheap, and the big advantage is that the overhead is almost entirely the components since it takes so little time to place the abutment and cure the other piece into the already made removable appliance. Chair time is very little, and no lab fee. The pt will love it. I recomend the pink composite to cure the pieces into the removable appliance. The stuff that comes in the dual chamber gun like impression material. It's fast and easy to work with. (despite my excitement I am a gp with no interest in the company.)

Soft liners are high maintenance and short lifeterm. I agree locators are cheaper than domes and great attachments

In my experiences, the ERA attachment from Sterngold works particularly when the implants are divergent. The ERA is the only attachment system that can physically correct misaligned implants and make the attachment parallel to the path of insertion. This capability preserves the ERA's vertical resiliency thereby greatly reducing the occlusal forces transmitted to the implant. It is comparable in price to the locator and 2mm narrower to boot.

I agree that going the ERA or Locator route may the the better option. In addition, if finances are a major concern, use ERA implants which have the female attachment already on the implant. This will cost less than half the cost of regular implants.

ERA for sure. Locators are not resilient.

Hi, I recently had a bone graph for dental implants done at a University clinic. It was explained that a dressing would be placed over the gum that would eventually soften in two weeks and be removable. In my case the dressing did not soften but actually harden like a ceramic. I got an infection and my bone graph may have been compromised. No one has an answer for the paradoxical effect of dressing placed over the gum. The dressing had to be removed with a plier like device that broke it in pieces. What happened in my case. I have lost total confidence in this clinic.