Some years ago I was part of a group of ITI Fellows who began to investigate the concept of Immediate Full Arch Loading.
I have to be careful how I write this because there are some branded names for this type of procedure who get very upset if the procedure itself is criticised in any way; but in essence IFAL is the placement of dental implants into an upper and/or lower arch with immediate restoration with a fixed bridge.
Many concepts of this have been produced including the use of four implants, six implants, eight implants and even more. Angled implants, axial implants and all types of designs of implants and restorations. It has been 'pioneered' by various different people and many people have added their own spin to IFAL to brand it as their own product.
The investigation by the Fellows of the ITI was to provide a systematic review of the whole procedure as there was definite concern among the Fellows as to the quality work that was being produced in the UK and the clinical outcomes as a result. In the end, going through a process of systematic review of immediate full arch cases it was impossible to source appropriate well published material in the overall outcome to provide an meaningful systematic review. This was not my conclusion, this was the conclusion of extremely experienced and (some) high-level academic people who are experience in the provision of systematic reviews.
That is not to say IFAL doesn't work, it's just to say that it has never been appropriately measured in a scientific way and we did look through all the papers produced by all the protagonists in this area - there simply isn't enough data to draw a conclusion.
The process though was intriguing because being someone who had utterly rejected the concept of IFAL for many years it did show that there were cases where this was entirely suitable and in fact, more suitable that a conventional staged approach. There are various perimeters that the clinician has to look at to assess the suitability of the patient and various circumstances that need to be in place to gain maximum possible success.
We instituted a pilot study in the practice and then developed our own protocol for the provision of IFAL in conjunction with experienced clinicians with 8000 dental implant placements between them. This protocol has been defined and developed and we are now in a position to share this with people who are interested in providing what we believe is an extremely safe form of immediate full arch loading in appropriate cases.
The three day IFAL Live Skills Course provides the platform for this in the practice; one day of surgical teaching on the surgical aspects of assessment and delivery of IFA implant placement in one or both arches, one day of the restorative aspects and clinical dental technical aspects and also delivery of the final restoration and the best way to provide this (in our opinion) and the third day on a live case start to finish in the practice.
There is a limited amount of space on a course like this to get the maximum impact for the delegates.
If you're interested please contact: info@campbellacademy.co.uk
Blog Post Number: 859
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