Implant bridges.
Once implants are splinted together, the prosthesis is rigid and the implants cannot move to accommodate a discrepancy. Passive fit stops being a refinement and becomes the requirement.
Splint or restore individually
Adjacent implants can be restored as separate crowns or splinted into a single unit. Individual restorations are easier to make fit, easier to clean between, and easier to replace if one fails.
Splinting distributes load across implants, which matters where individual implants are short, narrow, in poorer bone, or subject to heavy function. It also removes the interproximal contact between them, which cannot open the way a contact against a natural tooth does.
The trade is that splinted units must fit passively together, and hygiene access beneath the connector has to be designed in.
Passive fit is not negotiable
A splinted prosthesis that does not seat passively loads the components permanently. The consequences appear as screw loosening, screw fracture, component failure or marginal bone loss — usually months later, when the cause is no longer obvious.
No recording method is immune. Conventional impressions distort; digital scans accumulate stitching error across a span; both suffer where there are few landmarks between implants.
For longer spans, plan a verification step rather than assuming a record that looked good is accurate. Scanbody accuracy covers why error compounds with multiple implants.
Cantilevers
A cantilevered extension applies a bending moment at the terminal implant rather than axial load, and the magnitude scales with the length. Short posterior cantilevers are common and generally tolerated; longer ones in heavy function are where component and screw failures concentrate.
The same applies to an occlusal table offset from the implant axis — a wide molar restoration on a narrow implant placed lingually. The load is not where the implant is, and the difference is a lever arm.
Keep occlusal contacts over the implant axis wherever possible and reduce contact on any cantilevered portion.
Retention across multiple units
Screw retention is generally preferred on multi-unit work, because retrievability matters more the more components are involved and because it avoids cement in a region that is difficult to clean.
Where angulation makes screw access unfavourable on one unit, the options are an angulated screw channel where the system supports it, a screw-retained abutment with a cemented superstructure, or accepting cement retention with a supragingival margin.
Decide before components are ordered.
Design for hygiene
Connectors and the intaglio surface beneath a splinted prosthesis are the hardest regions to clean, and a prosthesis that cannot be cleaned will develop peri-implant problems regardless of how well it fits.
Convex, polished tissue surfaces rather than concave ones. Enough space beneath the connectors for an interdental brush. Then show the patient specifically how to clean it and have them demonstrate.
Pontic design between implants
A pontic in an implant bridge sits over a ridge that has usually resorbed since the teeth were lost, which means the space beneath it is often greater than in a tooth-borne bridge.
The instinct to close that space entirely produces a prosthesis the patient cannot clean. The alternatives are a convex, polished tissue surface with genuine access beneath, ridge augmentation before restoration, or a pink ceramic contribution replacing the missing tissue.
Decide deliberately and tell the patient how to clean it. On implant work, cleansability should generally win.
What to send
The system, product line, platform and connection for every implant, and whether they differ between them. Intended retention. Whether you want the units splinted or separate.
The antagonist, evidence of parafunction, and whether a verification stage is planned. Photographs of the healing abutments before removal.
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Send a case
Digital scans and conventional impressions are both accepted. Cases move by UPS and Purolator, and Fairmont works with practices throughout British Columbia and across Canada.