Partner Magazine logo 15

logo 39 • the CAMLOG Partner Magazine • November 2016 EVENTS 36 STRONG TEETH AT LAST – WITH COMFOUR™ According to the DMS V, some 145 million teeth (without wisdom teeth) are missing among the about 8.2 million people aged between 75 and 100 years. On a more gratifying note, the proportion of edentulous patients has dropped considerably versus the nine year old version of the DMS IV. Nonetheless, some 32.8 percent of people in this age group (equals 2.7 million) were still completely edentulous. The percentage for an edentulous maxilla is 47.1 percent, for an edentulous mandible 34.4 percent. 8.0 percent of the investigated patients (0.66 million) had implant-supported dentures. This demonstrates that the potential for implant-supported dentures is considerable. Next to removable dentures on implants, more and more patients are deciding in favor of an occlusally screw-retained restoration with the COMFOUR™ System. Professor Ricken has been involved with this concept since 2009. Many of the several hundred patients he has already restored in this manner are well over 80 years old and the implant survival rate of this immediate restoration concept with a placement of more than 1,300 implants exceeds 99 percent in his practice. This makes the concept highly successful and it meets the patient's wish for strong teeth, attractive esthetics, short treatment periods and moderate costs due to the reduced number of required implants compared with other concepts for fixed restorations. Rethinking to surgically oriented implants is not easy, states Professor Ricken. Often bone had to be sacrificed so that the "transition line" lies above the smile line and for the 16 mm long implants to be placed 3-dimensionally in an optimal manner. Professor Ricken does not use a surgery template due to the problem of fixation in an edentulous jaw. As a rule, the patient is under full anesthesia for 2.5 hours per jaw and wakes up with a fixed immediate temporary denture. This is obtained with the aid of a deep drawn splint from the existing denture, metal-reinforced and finished by the dental technician during treatment. The connection to the intraoperative screw- retained COMFOUR™ Abutments or bar abutments has a perfect fit via titanium caps. The COMFOUR™ Abutments are screwed in once and no longer removed. After a healing period of six to twelve weeks the patient can receive definitive restoration at abutment level with COMFOUR™ accessories. Strong teeth at last – with COMFOUR™ and in a single session! Edentulous patients in Germany are still largely not restored with implant-supported dentures. According to the fifth German Oral Health Study (DMS V) which was published in August 2016, the proportion of implant-supported dentures in the age group 75 - 100 years was 8 percent. With the COMFOUR™ System and correspondingly matched treatment concepts, it is possible to restore patients with an occlusally screw-retained immediate temporary denture and to replace this after an appropriate healing time with a fixed denture. CAMLOG offers a nationwide series of live surgery courses with renowned speakers for this type of restoration. The logo editorial team joined one of these courses held by Prof. Lutz Ricken in Bad Wildungen. Fig. 1: Prof. Lutz Ricken explains his philosophy for using the COMFOUR ™ System. Fig. 2: Prof. Ricken inserted four CAMLOG ® SCREW-LINE Implants at this live surgery course; the distal implants were placed at approximately 30° angles. Fig. 3: Dental technician Tolga Kütük finished the metal- reinforced immediate restoration "intraoperatively“.