Dental CT images and surgical guides

Surgical Guides are made in conjunction CT images of the patient. When dental surgery is done to a patient, there are many things we need to know in order to succeed with the surgery and cause no harm to the patients. When doing implant surgery in particular, we can minimize risk by using dental Surgical Guides.

Surgical Guides: What do they accomplish?

When we want to place implants, we need to be very aware of the nerves and blood vessels of the head and neck. It would not be good to perforate the bone in the wrong place, cut a major artery or sever a nerve causing permanent numbness.

The way we prevent this is by taking a 3d CT image of the area to be treated. This shows us exactly where the nerves or blood vessels are. We then can virtually decide where the implants need to be placed avoiding the problem areas.

Designing the appliance

The surgical guide is a piece of plastic with holes precut into it on the exact angle needed to drill a hole into the jaw. The appliance fits over the adjacent teeth so it wont move at all. All that needs to be done is to drill through the hole in the appliance to the correct length and the implant will be placed exactly in the correct location without doing damage to the patients.

Dental CT FAQ’s