Healing abutments: one for all or all for one?

Each dentist knows that orthopedic stage is very important in dental implantation. 

The healing of soft tissues was thoroughly studied by many researches. However, some dentists offer their patients to re-use healing abutments.

In most cases, patients agree to do it in order to save money, but they may forget about huge risk to their health. It is important to know some basic processes of osseointegration at all stages of dental implantation.

Healing abutments perform several important functions. First function is to protect the main part of the dental implant from debris accumulations and plaque. Second, is to prevent soft and hard tissues from infection.

In order to stimulate healing process, healing cap should be made of high quality material. Remember that even chemical composition and shape of healing abutment could prevent the recession of soft tissue and alveolar ridge. In addition, hydrophilic surface is also vital. Great osseointegration can be achieved only if cells can attach and spread over healing cap surface. However, the surface of reused healing abutment cannot perform decent hydrophilic qualities.

Alpha Dent Implants company have great solution for second use of healing abutment issue. For dentist and patient comfort, this element was included into new pack of German manufacture. We also want to emphasize that second use of healing abutment cause the risk of implant disintegration and creates thread to patient health.

Here are the main reasons not to re-use healing abutment:

• Many dental implants manufacturers inform their customers not to re-use healing caps. The main reason is that even sterilization would not recreate the original surface of a new abutment.
• Re-used healing abutments can seriously harm the patient health. Such types of sterilization as steam or chemical autoclave, ultra-violet light, or ethylene oxide—sterilization may change the initial properties of the titanium wettability, and then a successful osseointegration is simply impossible.
• Moreover, mechanical cleaning —especially via air particle abrasion, may seriously damage healing cup- implant screw. Healing abutment thread is very important factor for tissue healing. Crew thread is a place where debris is accumulated, so that is impossible to clean it properly. Moreover, the removing healing abutment from implant often deforms its thread. Such defects may cause serious damages within the implant.  In some cases, the thread of used healing cap can not be tightly fixed to implants. Sometimes, the deformed thread can also lead to healing abutment`s “locking” onto the implant.
• Some dentists, who re-use healing cups, often have problem with screwdriver, because it may not properly engage. This can be result of the screwdriver insertion site clogging.

Explain that risks to the patients who want to save some money on re-used healing abutments.  Remember to emphasize that it is a dubious decision, which can be harmful to patient health.