Let me explain to you the different style of implants and the component that gets on top of it that helped makes a crown. Each implant crown complex is usually made out of three components. You have the part that goes inside the bone, that’s the implant, and the crown that’s going to fit on top of that implants with the help of an intermediate piece, and that’s called the abutment. Each implant is made of three components. The implant, the abutments that will connect the crown to the implant itself.

There are different types of crowns, different types of abutment, different types of implants. Mainly, you have, again, the piece that goes inside the bone. For example, right here, you have a standard abutment. This is a piece that comes out of a box. One size fits all. You can still make a crown on top of it, but sometimes you need more sophistication and more design customization. For that, we need to do a custom abutment. And that’s actually the piece that I use more in my practice.

We customize it through either our lab technicians or digital dentistry, and then we make a crown on top of it. The advantage of this is it’s unique for each patient and it will help provide the most accurate and the nicest emergence profile so you don’t have food get between your teeth and will help match the teeth size and color and works very well with the gum and with the surrounding tissue.

There are different styles of implant crowns like this for example. It’s a little bit more of a one-piece. It’s still there is an abutment that will be cemented to the crown but this will become one piece that will be screwed into your implants. We like doing this whenever we can. That requires a very precise implant placement and location. And the beauty of it is if something happened, it’s easily replaceable. We’re talking about the crown that gets on top of that implant. Let’s say with time, what we’re seeing nowadays is teeth shift implants because it is implanted solid in the bone. It doesn’t move so we might need to add some material to the sides to provide intimate contacts. We can easily unscrew this, add some components, and put it back in. That’s the advantage of this style of design.

And then, of course, you have the all-ceramic implant. In this particular case, it’s a zirconia implant. It’s the only material available for us to do all-ceramic implants. As you can see, it’s tooth-colored. It’s very bioinert. All the components of the all-ceramic implants are made out of ceramic. The screw that helps secure the abutments to the implant is a fiberglass or carbon fiber. You sell making all those ceramic crowns. So in case if you have any metal allergy or if you want to have more bioinert material and stay away from metal completely, we have the solution for you.

Learn more about dental implant crowns process here. Please call the office at (301) 652-9505 if you have any questions or to set up an appointment. We serve the Chevy Chase, MD area.