The Hybrid Denture In A Class Of Its Own

3. Screw-retained or cementable implant crown and bridge-type restorations

This category can be made as full arch prosthetics or in various segments, including single tooth restorations and bridges. This option is typically designed with tooth-colored restorations that abut directly onto the tissue and mimic natural tooth emergence from the tissue. This type of restoration requires the patient to have minimal bone loss and is best used when tissue retains maximum thickness and scalloping. This style of restoration is often used when teeth have been removed recently, and implants with accompanying healing abutments have been placed to retain papilla shape.

4. Hybrid Denture: a class all on its own 

This category can employ several types of material to fabricate the prosthetic, but the end treatment is a screw-retained prosthetic that replaces both pink tissue and teeth for the whole arch.

Materials Available for Hybrid Prosthetics (but not limited to)

• Metal substructure with acrylic and denture teeth (Figure 3)
• Monolithic Zirconia with titanium base cylinders
• Porcelain fused to metal hybrid-style prosthetics
• Milled monolithic composite bonded to a metal substructure

This final category will be the focus of the remainder of the article, specifically an option that Burbank Dental Lab has found to be highly desirable. As one of the nation's leading dental implant laboratories, Burbank Dental Lab has responded to our clinicians' feedback, and we have developed our own solution for the dental implant hybrid category: the SmartComposite® Hybrid Prosthesis.

Burbank Dental Lab's SmartComposite® Hybrid Prosthesis is a unique approach within the fixed hybrid category of restorations. The development of SmartComposite was derived as a solution to meet the expressed needs of our clinicians and has been received very well by dentists in every type of practice.