Part 2: An Eight-Year Dental Odyssey in the Life of a 22-Year-Old Patient PROVISIONALIZING EDENTULOUS SITES IN A POST-ORTHODONTIC CASE By Randy K. Newby, DDS Fig. 1 here are many options available to a dentist to provi-sionalize missing anterior teeth in a finished orthodontic case prior to definitive treatment that is usually performed when the patient has completed growth. We’ll explore some of these options in this article. The case presented is from a patient with congenitally miss-ing maxillary lateral incisors that shows how I provisional-ized those sites for five years prior to guided bone regenera-tion and root form implant placement at age 22. Fig. 2 of time. After reviewing all of the provisional options discussed earlier, the patient and his parents desired a fixed option. The patient wanted to complete his high school and college years with fixed restorations. We decided to place 3M Unitek 10mm TADs (Fig. 2 ) 2,3 in the maxillary lateral incisor sites and to fabricate E4D 5 T Treatment Plan The post orthodontic case shown is of a patient miss-ing his maxillary lateral incisors (Fig. 1). The patient and his parents decided when age appropriate to restore these sites with root form implants, custom abutments, and porcelain crowns. I informed the patient and his parents that root form implants should not be placed until growth is completed. 7 In a male patient, this would be after age 21 to be on the safe side (five years after the orthodontic treatment was completed in this case). The next concern to discuss was how to provisionalize the missing maxillary lateral incisor sites for that length Fig. 3 32 Fall 2017 JAOS
Journal of the American Orthodontic Society Fall 2017: Page 32
