Software tools and surgical guides in dental-implant-guided surgery.

Cone beam computed tomography has become an essential tool in the diagnosis and planning for implant dentistry. New hardware and software developments have emerged to help implant surgeons to successfully adopt and use different systems in patients requiring prosthetically driven implant dentistry. However, there is the need to develop an adequate planning protocol that includes appropriate acquisition/data manipulation, appropriate use of software tools for interpretation, and appropriate application of such systems during implant surgery.

3D cephalometrics: the new norm.

With the advent of cone beam computed tomography (CBCT), the diagnostic foundations of dentistry have been forever changed and advanced into a new era of 3-dimensional (3D) possibilities. In the case of implant planning, which was among the first applications of this technology, the exact 3D location of the implant could be preplanned and even guided during surgery. This was a major advancement in implant planning above and beyond traditional radiographic images, such as panoramic, bitewing, and periapical films, all of which are subject to magnification errors and dimensional distortion.