Traditional dental implants and digitalization

After American GPS and European Galileo, the Beidou satellite navigation system independently developed by China has become one of the three major satellite navigation systems in the world. In the era without navigation, when people work in the field or travel abroad, they always rely on maps to guide the direction, or rely on memory to identify the direction and travel around the world, so they often get lost and go astray.

The same is true of our traditional implant surgery. Before the empowerment of "digital black technology", dental implant doctors can only check the details of the preoperative bone tissue and neurovascular distribution of patients through imaging technology; You must also know the local anatomical structure of the mouth like the back of your hand and have a strong sense of space; At the same time, the two-dimensional image should be transformed into a three-dimensional image in the brain, and the operation link of implant implantation into alveolar bone should be outlined repeatedly in the mind. Every step needs to be simulated and deduced. Without long-term training and experience accumulation, it is difficult to achieve accurate implantation. This traditional "blind planting" operation that relies entirely on experience is called "bare-handed" implantation.

Nowadays, a black technology revolution has made oral implants have their own "navigation system". Recently, Liu Xin, a young member of the Professional Committee of Prosthodontics of the Chinese Stomatological Association, vice chairman of the Oral Health Branch of the Heilongjiang Medical Care International Exchange Promotion Association, and associate professor and deputy chief physician of the Department of Prosthodontics of the First Affiliated Hospital of Harbin Medical University, said in an interview with the media that with the increasingly close connection between digital technology and dental implant science, the traditional behavior pattern of implant diagnosis and treatment has undergone profound changes, and gradually moved from experience, generalization and outline to standardization, precision, personalization and digitalization. The "stunning appearance" of oral scanning systems such as cone-beam CT and optical digital impression, oral digital software, 3D printing technology and dynamic navigation system provide technical support and safety guarantee for the personalization and accuracy of oral implant and prosthetic surgery.

Relying on the new technology of "Oral Beidou System", Professor Liu Xin's team has intensively cultivated in the field of digital dental implant, and has successfully completed hundreds of digital dental implant operations so far. Compared with the traditional "bare-handed" oral implant technology, digital oral implant surgery is safer, more accurate, minimally invasive, more efficient and more comfortable. At the same time, the personalized surgical design scheme is presented to patients in a digital intuitive and three-dimensional form, which facilitates the direct face-to-face communication between doctors and patients, not only improves the accuracy and success rate of implant surgery, but also saves operation time, reduces surgical trauma and reduces postoperative complications.

Practical experience shows that digital planting fully conforms to the general trend of future development. With the help of digital dental implant technology, the process of dental implant has changed from "knowing the root and the bottom" in the past to "being vivid" now. Liu Xin pointed out that the accuracy of three-dimensional position of implant is an important factor affecting the function and aesthetics of prosthesis. Previously, the accuracy of the three-dimensional position of implants mainly depended on the surgeon's clinical experience, and the surgical plan only relied on the experience and the three-dimensional space and imagination formed by the brain to design the placement of implants and the later full crown restoration design. At the same time, it is necessary to form a three-dimensional image of the crown restoration effect in the later stage in the brain, which matches the initial stage of implant implantation, and its accuracy is difficult to guarantee.

Liu Jiaoshou said that in actual clinical work, we often encounter all kinds of complicated cases, such as continuous multiple tooth loss, complete edentulous jaw, severe atrophy of jaw, special anatomical structure, etc., and the operation of the surgeon's "free hand" is often "a thousand miles a day"; This requires higher surgical accuracy, and the digital static guide plate can provide a visual preoperative planning scheme. Doctors can design implants in the ideal position according to the principle of "restoration first", predict the difficulty of treatment in advance, avoid the risk of surgery, and make the implantation process and postoperative results more predictable. Liu Xin's experience is that, as a brand-new digital holographic imaging technology, "digital design system+digital guide board" simulates preoperative planning, ranging, angle measurement, blood vessel distance, blood vessel diameter, volume and area measurement and other surgical steps through 3D visual reading software on the computer side, so that doctors can easily rotate and enlarge every detail, and the patient's surgical process and implantation position can be seen at a glance.

Under the great wave of world industrial revolution 4.0 and made in China 2025, digital technology has also greatly broken through the limitations of traditional diagnosis and treatment. Among them, the development of digital photo impression technology and the progress of prosthodontics technology make patients have a comfortable experience in the process of dental implant treatment, which completely relieves their psychological burden and mental fear. Liu Xin explained that because the shape of each tooth is different, just like everyone's fingerprint is different, the tooth-making process needs 1: 1 to reproduce the "fingerprint". The denture factory makes dentures on the reproduced model, while the traditional impression method is to put the tray and impression materials into the patient's mouth, which is very easy to cause nausea, nausea and vomiting for people with strong foreign body sensation in the pharynx. Digital impression technology can not only shorten the waiting time of tray and mixed impression materials, but also effectively reduce the operation steps and processes such as disinfecting impression, curing materials, pouring and transporting models, making the patient's diagnosis and treatment experience simpler and more comfortable.

At the same time, the traditional impression models such as silicone rubber and alginate not only need to occupy a lot of storage space, but also need to consume more consumables such as substitutes, and some relatively complex implant restoration models must be preserved for a long time, so it is difficult to store the models in stomatology. In contrast, digital dental impression only needs to store relevant data in CD or hard disk, which saves a lot of space, is also conducive to random retrieval, and avoids potential pollution caused by long-term storage of impression data. Moreover, digital impression technology can not only display the three-dimensional morphology of oral tissues, but also clarify the color information, digitally compare teeth and simulate the specific restoration process. It can also let patients intuitively understand the restoration scheme and the expected overall restoration effect, communicate with doctors at any time, express their personal demands and ensure the restoration effect.

Professor Liu Xin commented that accuracy, efficiency and comfort have always been the dream and pursuit of dental implant practitioners, whether it is difficult or routine dental implant surgery. The popularization and application of digital technology will inevitably accelerate this trend, simplify the planting operation and be more easily accepted by the masses. However, behind this "simplicity" is a strict and complicated standard, from the acquisition of preoperative three-dimensional image data, computer-aided implant surgery to the design and processing of postoperative implant prosthesis, every step is interlocking. At the same time, surgeons still play a leading role in digital implantation, which requires the cooperation of professional doctors with rich clinical experience, combined with a large number of simulation training, to improve the whole medical process, from data collection, surgical design to accurate surgical implementation, forming a whole digital closed loop, in order to truly achieve the purpose of accurate implantation.

At present, it is an indisputable fact that the training period of dentists is long, the cost is high, the medical level varies from place to place, and the accuracy of "bare-handed" dental implants is low, which brings great resistance to the development of dental implant technology in primary hospitals. Under the background of the innovation and development of artificial intelligence technology and the new format of digital planting, the "golden key" to solve the above problems has undoubtedly been cast.

Looking forward to the future, Dr. Liu Xin believes that people will not only further enhance the accuracy of dynamic and static navigation and the responsiveness of navigation system by developing more accurate registration methods and algorithms, but also hope to use the Internet to transmit data, build a "golden bridge" for interactive remote consultation or remote consultation, and even guide and implement the whole planning process of implant surgery by telemedicine. In the era of digital planting, it is no longer a dream to "plant" satisfactory "new teeth" efficiently, comfortably, quickly and safely.

Brief introduction of Dr. Liu Xin

Doctor of stomatology, deputy chief physician.

Young member of the Professional Committee of Prosthodontics of the Chinese Stomatological Association, young candidate member of the Professional Committee of Stomatology of the Chinese Stomatological Association, and vice chairman of the Oral Health Branch of the Heilongjiang Medical and Health International Exchange Promotion Association. The two papers included in SCI are both published by the first author, with an impact factor of 3.0, and there are many national core journals. He presided over a scientific research project of Heilongjiang Provincial Health and Wellness Committee, and a special horizontal project of local science and technology development directed by the central finance. Editor-in-chief of the monograph "Clinical Oral Disease Diagnosis and Treatment Guide" and textbook "New Progress in Diagnosis and Treatment of Otolaryngology Diseases". Won the second prize of Heilongjiang provincial government for scientific and technological progress.