What is a Dental Implant?
A Dental implant is an artificial tooth root made mainly of a biocompatible metal called Titanium. These Titanium posts are inserted in the place of the missing tooth root so that it can support the arfificial crown. Previously fixed replacement of lost tooth was performed by grinding out the adjacent teeth and fixing a teeth bridge onto the ground out teeth.
Why All on 4 Implants?
If the Implant represents the tooth root, what if an entire jaw or both the jaws are in a completely edentulous ( no teeth) state. Should Implants be placed for each and every missing tooth in the jaw. That would amount to a very expensive treatment and an extensive surgical procedure to place all the implants in the bone. So Various concepts were made to reduce the number of implants in the jaw while maximising the function of the prosthesis.
Maxillary Sinus
The maxillary sinus is an air filled cavity in the upper jaw. This cavity keeps on increasing in size when there are no teeth. This reduces the amount of bone available for Implant placement. Therefore additional procedures like sinus lifting had to be done to place the implants.How to avoid these additional procedures.
What is All on 4?
Four Implants were placed in the upper and lower jaw. The two front implants were placed in a straight manner and two back implants were tilted to avoid the maxillary sinus in the upper jaw and mandibular nerve in the lower jaw. This reduces the complicated surgical procedure and also eliminates the distal cantilever of the prosthesis.
