Guided zygomatic implant surgery

Total edentulism is a challenging condition. Currently, these kinds of patients are highly demanding for easy, cost-effective, rapid solutions, but these aspects are not always easy to achieve. Preprosthetic bone grafting by utilizing autogenous or xenografts have been considered the gold standard so far, in order to achieve sufficient volume for implantation. However, these kids of procedures often have high financial costs, or bear significant morbidity and are weakly predictable. In cases of highly atrophic maxilla, zygomatic implants can be an alternative option with high success rates shown in literature. However, this kind of surgery involves anatomical sites that are adjacent to particularly delicate structures, such as; pterygo-maxillary fossa, infratemporal fossa and orbit, and they must be practiced only by experienced surgeons by means of technologically adequate products. In order to prevent serious complications, a variety of techniques was proposed by numerous authors in literature for improving accuracy and decreasing the risks of zygomatic implant surgery (such as, guided surgery and navigation systems). Aim of this study is to introduce a CBCT-derived surgical guide for insertion of zygomatic implants. For his purpose, an exact replica of the entire maxilla and zygomatic bone were fabricated in actual scale model size using 3D.