Fixed Hybrid, Also called an ALL-ON 4
For the person who requires a full arch restoration – someone has lost all their own natural teeth from either their upper or lower jaw, or indeed from both – a hybrid denture is perhaps the closest thing to having all your own natural teeth back. It’s a cross between a removable denture and a fixed dental bridge, or to put it another way it’s a denture that is permanently attached to implants in your jaw bone. It can’t move around in your mouth causing embarrassment to you or irritation and soreness to your gums, it doesn’t come out at night, and you will once again be able to eat almost anything you want.
A Fixed Hybrid denture offers you improved Retention, improved Appearance and Fit, improved Stability and, perhaps most importantly, improved Confidence. This fixed solution reduces palatal coverage to a minimum – if you are accustomed to a full palate in your denture, you will find this reduced by approximately 95%.
The process - From having your Initial assessment, you could be walking away with your new fixed hybrid in as little as four months.
First of all, you will need a consultation with an implant dentist who will assess you and do a scan, to ensure that you have sufficient bone and are a suitable candidate for a fixed hybrid. If so, an appointment will be made for a minimum of four implants to be placed (the dentist will advise on the number).
At no point will you be left without teeth during this process. Either your existing denture can be adapted, or a new temporary acrylic denture can be made to wear while you are healing. The healing process can take eight to twelve weeks, depending on the patient’s individual physiology.
Once you are healed, the permanent final restoration will be made and teeth placed to check that they are in the correct position. When this has been done, the titanium Atlantis bar is made up.
When the bar is returned from the laboratory in Belgium where it is made, teeth are placed on the bar and you will get to try the denture in and see how it looks and feels.
Finally, once you have approved the denture, it will be finished and fitted.
The bar looks like this, but you won’t see it in the final denture as it is covered by the pink gum material.
This cutaway diagram shows the implants going into the jaw bone, and how the denture is built up around the titanium bar.
And this diagram shows the hybrid denture fixed in place.
Caring for the hybrid denture
As with your own natural teeth, the hybrid denture needs daily cleaning using a soft toothbrush and a non-abrasive denture toothpaste. A small gap is left between the denture and your gum, so you can clean the underside of the denture and the soft tissue (for example, with a small interdental brush) to prevent plaque build-up, which would cause inflammation of the gums and possibly damage your implants.
Once a year you need to visit the dentist, who will professionally remove and clean the denture.
At Clinical Denture Centre, we work very closely with dentists who can provide a fixed hybrid denture using the Dentsply Sirona Atlantis suprastructure, now part of Astra Tech Implant System®. To see the technical process involved, click on the video link below.