Is Your Lab Voiding Your Implant Warranty?

Wednesday, April 30, 2014

Is Your Lab Voiding Your Implant Warranty?

Imagine this scenario. You are about to deliver an implant restoration for which your patient has been waiting for six months. Everything looks good and you are starting to torque down your abutment.  All of a sudden, the screw head breaks off. You pull out your abutment, and all that is left is a very sharp screw with no head on it.

After the initial thought, oh my God what am I going to do now, you realize that your rotary instrument only goes forward and you can’t even tap the screw out of the implant. The only thing you are able to do now is explain the situation to the patient then try to figure out what the heck your next move will be.

This is happening every day in dental offices across America. Implant manufacturers report 25 to 35% fewer abutments are sold than implants. Three things can account for this drop. We will review each from best to worst.

An ATLANTIS Implant Abutment3rd Party Custom Abutment Providers

Patient specific abutments are being made by companies such as DENTSPLY Implants with their Atlantis Abutments line. Although the use of these custom abutments can void the warranty provided with the implant itself, in the case of Atlantis Abutments, the warranty offered by DENTSPLY Implants actually is better than the ones provided by most manufacturers.

Abutments from Competitive Manufacturers

Companies such as Nobel Biocare provide abutments for other companies such as Zimmer or Straumann. Using these abutments also voids your warranty. However, Nobel Biocare is willing to provide a Nobel Biocare implant if a failure occurs. This is a nice way to replace the warranty on the implant used, but it will not really help a specialist who only stocks placement kits for the implant systems with which they work.

Lab Produced Custom Abutments

The last one is the worst and most prevalent. The lab purchases a milling machine and then reverse engineers the manufacturer’s implant platform or works with a company that has done so. This gives the lab an ability to manufacture custom abutments in house at a low cost, but these lab-fabricated custom abutments do not always fit well. If you put them on the model, they may turn slightly in your fingers or fall out if you turn the model over. The most concerning aspect of abutments produced this way is because each manufacturer uses a different amount of torque on their screws, the labs must take this into account when providing their third party screws.

It is important to remember that all of the implant companies have to go through a rigorous FDA 510K process before each one of their platforms is approved for intraoral use. There are years of science behind both the implant and abutment components of each one of these systems. Unless you know an abutment came from the same manufacturer as the implant, the value of all of this testing is lost.

An implant system in its original packageSo what can you do to make sure you are doing right by your patient?

Price is always a good barometer. If it seems too good to be true, most likely it is. A low cost abutment is offered at that price point for a reason, and compromising a warranty or risking a failure could turn this bargain into a financial loss.

You also should be talking to your implant rep to make sure the lab you use is purchasing abutments that match the implant system you use. But even this can’t always ensure the abutment you get back from the lab is the genuine part you expected. The best way for you to know for sure is to ask you lab to include the packaging the implant parts came in with the abutment and the rest of the restoration.

Dental implant systems are much more than just the implants themselves, and every piece of these systems is important. The best way to provide your patients with the care they expect is to use these systems the way they were designed, and this means making sure the parts you place in each patient’s mouth are designed and manufactured to work together.

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