Shorter Dental Implants: Is it best to get a bar?

Question

I had 3 dental implants placed in my lower jaw.  They are all shorter due to fairly severe jaw atrophy.  Is it best to get a dental bar to connect the dental implants? What are my other options?

Answer 1

If the best is what you are looking for, the bar allows you to share the forces applied to the implants and takes the pressure from the soft tissues, thus making it an implant supported instead of tissue supported overdenture.

However, if your implants are short, placing more of them (the concept of over-engineering) would have been a good idea.  Four or five implants and a bar wouild allow for contingencies in case one fails and the implants would share the load better.

Three implants is the minimum number for a bar.

Good luck!

Dr. Carlos Boudet
West Palm Beach , FL
(561) 968 6022
boudetdds.com

Answer 2

Generally speaking it is best to place a bar on top of implants designed to support a removable prosthesis. The main advantage is that the bar provides additional strength to the system and equally distributes the chewing forces across the bar and underlying implants. One of the very difficult challenges when connecting a denture to multiple free standing implants is to get equal force to each implant when chewing and removing the denture. It is critical to determine whether you have enough space above the implants to accomodate a bar. This 'space' needs to be taken into consideration when placing the implants. Sometimes bone removal if required to provide enough space for the bar.

Ken Templeton DDS
Tulsa, OK
www.revitalizeimplants.com/
918-508-2121