Recently, implant surgery has been introduced into postdoctoral prosthodontic programs yet efficient training models to accomplish this have not been described to date. For training models to be effective and acceptable to all parties, a mutual benefi...
Recently, implant surgery has been introduced into postdoctoral prosthodontic programs yet efficient training models to accomplish this have not been described to date. For training models to be effective and acceptable to all parties, a mutual beneficial situation has to be created, and guidelines, which can be followed easily, need to be described. The purpose of this report is to suggest immediate loading of dental implants as an example for an interdisciplinary training model, integrating both surgical aspects of implant therapy into the education of prosthodontic graduate students, and prosthodontic aspects of implant therapy into the training of periodontal graduate students.
A flowchart of training steps is described for a patient treated with an immediately loaded mandibular fixed full-arch prosthesis on five interforaminal implants. Both the prosthodontic and the periodontal residents were involved in all phases of treatment. The post-doctoral students in this project were in the final year of their program. Therefore individual treatment steps could be interchangeably taught and rendered by the student of the other specialty. The unique characteristic of theimmediate loading procedure, which includes surgical implant placement as well as immediate conversion of an existing denture into a fixed implant supported provisional prosthesis, allows for detailed surgical and prosthodontic treatment experiences by each post-graduate student in a controlled environment on the day of surgery.