Good occlusal practice in the provision of implant borne prostheses

Abstract

The increased use of endosseous dental implants means that many dentists will encounter patients with dental implants in their everyday practice. Dental practitioners might be actively involved in the provision of implant borne prostheses at both the surgical and restorative phases, or only at the restorative stage. This section is written for all dentists and aims to examine the subject of occlusion within implantology. It aims to provide guidelines of good occlusal practice to be used in the design of the prosthesis that is supported or retained by one or more implants. As implantology is a 'new' discipline of dentistry, there are fewer standard texts and this section, therefore, is much more extensively referenced than the subjects that have been considered to date.