Cancer and Long Spans Don’t Stop Digital Dentistry

A long-time patient of ours had a long-span PFM bridge with recurrent caries, and rather going to another bridge, the patient elected to do two implants and two crowns.   This seems to be the trend:   replacing a bridge with some type of implants.   The benefit that our patients seem to really like is that their teeth are all individual units again.   I feel like the benefit for the patient that has the biggest impact is that the teeth are not all “married” to each other.  Having a problem on one does not affect the others.   When you are dealing with very long-span bridges, as in this case, one area of caries can make problems for an entire quadrant.

 

 

 

 

We removed the bridge to discover the caries, cleaned up the preparations and milled a bis-acrylic bridge (Ivoclar-Vivadent Telio CAD.)   This bridge material and method was selected because it would easily last one year of service while the surgeries for the implants were completed and osseointegration occurred.

What we did not anticipate for our lovely patient was a diagnosis of cancer right after the provisional was placed!   She had to pause her dental work and focus on it, of course.  After months and months of chemotherapy she was able to regain her life cancer-free.   We were quite excited for her as she regained her strength and her life.   Her “smaller” dental problem was now back on track.

Fantastically, the provisional Telio CAD bridge lasted and functioned beautifully for nearly two years!   (Could this be so good to be a permanent?   Who knows! Possibly!)  The implants were finally ready to restore!  Scanned into CEREC using the Omnicam, the restorations for the teeth and the implants were designed and milled.   Her bilateral crossbite made it a little challenging for function, but it was straight-forward in the CEREC software.

The two implants had two custom abutments made that were bonded to the TiBase (Sirona Dental Systems.)   When the patient was ready for insertion, the abutments were screw retained, and the 4 crowns were cemented in place.

Not only was there a huge benefit with the superior milled bis-acrylic bridge for time, but the digital aspect allowed for us to have complete control of the final outcome.  The highlight to this case (other than her victory from cancer) was the ability of the Telio CAD material to function as well as it did.   Interesting to see how this material plays a role in dentistry over the years.

We were so happy for her conquest of cancer and a better solution for her teeth.