Working with Coquitlam dental practices.
Coquitlam practices increasingly restore implants placed elsewhere, and that shared-care pattern introduces a specific and avoidable source of delay.
Shared implant cases lose information between clinicians
An implant placed by a surgeon or specialist and restored by the general practice involves two clinicians and two sets of records. The surgeon knows the system, the platform and why the implant was positioned as it was; the restoring dentist knows the prosthetic plan.
If neither takes responsibility for transmitting the component detail, the laboratory receives half the picture from each and the case stops while it is assembled.
Agree at the outset who owns the laboratory relationship for the case, and make sure the placement record reaches that person. It is a short conversation that removes the commonest cause of delay in shared implant work.
What the laboratory actually needs
The manufacturer, the product line, the platform diameter and the connection type. Whether screw or cement retention is intended. Whether a stock or custom abutment is expected. The antagonist, and any concern about interocclusal space.
None of that can be inferred reliably from a scan or an impression — connections that look similar in a photograph are frequently not interchangeable.
A photograph of the component packaging from the placement appointment settles it immediately. Implant component selection covers why each detail matters.
Records for implant cases
Scan bodies have to be the correct component for the system, fully seated and stable. A scan body short of the connection reports an implant position that is too shallow, often by well under a millimetre, which is invisible on screen and clinically decisive.
Where the implant is deep or access is limited, a periapical radiograph before scanning removes the most consequential failure mode in the workflow.
Capture the emergence before placing the scan body if profile matters — the sulcus begins to collapse within minutes of removing a healing abutment. Scanbody accuracy covers the protocol.
Practices adding implant restorative work
A practice restoring its first implants faces a learning curve that is largely administrative rather than clinical: identifying components, understanding what the laboratory needs, and learning which decisions have to be made before anything is ordered.
The clinical work is frequently the easier part. The recurring difficulties are component identification, scan body handling, and deciding between screw and cement retention before the abutment is made rather than after.
Call before the first few cases rather than after. Those conversations take minutes and they remove most of the early difficulty.
When implant cases become full-arch
Full-arch implant work is a different undertaking from single-unit restoring, and the decisions that determine success are made before the first implant is placed — restorative space, implant distribution, prosthesis type and the verification approach.
Restorative space in particular governs which prosthesis type is possible at all, and it is far easier to address at the planning stage than after surgery.
For a case being planned, a conversation with the laboratory before placement is worth considerably more than documentation afterwards.
Restorative space on implant cases
Interocclusal space in an implant restoration is shared between the abutment and the restoration above it, and a case that appears to have adequate clearance for a crown may not once abutment height, screw channel and material thickness are accounted for.
This is worth measuring at the planning stage rather than the restorative stage, because the remedies once the implant is placed are limited.
Where space is tight, tell the laboratory before components are ordered. Component selection and restoration design both change, and a titanium base needs adequate height for the bond that retains the ceramic above it.
Submitting cases
Digital and conventional records are both accepted, and cases move by UPS and Purolator. Fairmont works with practices throughout British Columbia and across Canada from the laboratory in Burnaby.