Digital implant workflow.
A digital implant case follows the same clinical logic as a conventional one. What changes is that the implant position is calculated from a scan body rather than transferred by an impression coping.
Position is inferred, not transferred
In a conventional workflow, an impression coping physically records the implant position and an analogue reproduces it in the cast. In a digital workflow, the software recognizes the scan body's shape and calculates depth, angulation and rotation from it.
Everything downstream depends on that calculation. The abutment, the emergence, the screw channel and the fit at the connection are all derived from a position nobody measured directly.
Which is why the scan body itself carries so much weight — see the scanbody guide.
Capture the emergence before the scan body goes in
The soft tissue contour around a healing abutment begins to collapse as soon as the abutment is removed. Within minutes the sulcus has changed shape.
Scan the emergence first, then place the scan body and capture again. The scan body obscures exactly the region the abutment has to be designed around, so a case scanned only with the body in place gives the technician the position but not the profile.
Where a provisional has developed the emergence, scanning the provisional itself is more informative still.
Design and the decisions inside it
The technician designs the abutment and restoration against the calculated implant position, the recorded emergence, the antagonist and the retention you specified.
Several decisions sit inside that: engaging or non-engaging component, margin depth around the circumference, emergence contour, screw channel position and whether the angulation permits the retention intended.
Most of these can only be made correctly if the prescription supplies the clinical context. Geometry does not say whether the patient's hygiene warrants a more accessible emergence, or whether a screw channel emerging buccally is acceptable.
Where a physical model still earns its place
Some implant cases proceed entirely without one. Others benefit — where contacts and emergence need assessing by hand, where a soft tissue model helps judge the profile, or where a restoration has to be tried against adjacent work physically.
A soft tissue model with a removable gingival mask is particularly useful in the aesthetic zone, because it shows how the emergence relates to the tissue rather than only to the geometry.
Say if you want one produced. It is a decision rather than an automatic step.
Multi-unit cases change the picture
Stitching error accumulates along a scan path, and it is independent of any error at the individual scan bodies. A case can have perfectly seated components and still carry meaningful cross-arch discrepancy.
For a single implant, small positional error is absorbed by the restoration and the cement or screw. For splinted implants it becomes stress rather than passive fit.
That is why verification steps persist in multi-unit implant workflows rather than having been designed away by better scanners.
What digital does not change
Everything clinical. The scan body still has to be the correct component, fully seated and stable. The emergence still has to be captured before the sulcus collapses. The bite still has to be accurate and the opposing arch complete.
Practices that find implant cases difficult conventionally usually find them difficult digitally, because the limiting factor was rarely the recording medium.
What digital genuinely removes is the impression material chain — distortion on removal, dimensional change on disinfection, delay before pouring, and model expansion — plus the outbound courier journey.
What to send
The scan itself, with the emergence captured separately. The implant system, product line, platform and connection. Which scan body was used, including manufacturer, if it is not the original.
Intended retention, stock or custom abutment, the antagonist, and photographs of the healing abutment before removal and of the component packaging.
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Digital scans and conventional impressions are both accepted. Cases move by UPS and Purolator, and Fairmont works with practices throughout British Columbia and across Canada.