CLINICAL EFFICACY OF USING OPTIMIZED SURGICAL NAVIGATION TEMPLATES

Navigational surgical templates are actively used in surgical dentistry, which significantly reduce the duration of surgical interventions and minimize the risk of postoperative complications. These templates are created using additive technologies such as 3D printing. Nevertheless, 3D printing technologies in dental practice continue to evolve and improve. The key areas of research are the selection of optimal structural materials and the development of post-printing processing methods. This article presents a clinical trial of the results of optimizing the design of surgical navigation templates for dental implantation. The study involved 124 patients with partial secondary adentia in the masticatory region of the upper or lower jaw (Kennedy class III) who required dental implantation. According to pre-determined inclusion, exclusion, and selection criteria, 64 patients were randomized and divided into two equal groups. In the main group, dental implantation was performed using optimized surgical templates, while in the control group, automatically modeled templates were used. Both groups were characterized by the use of pairs of implants of different lengths (from 8 to 12 mm) with a constant diameter of 4 mm. A clinical study confirmed the high efficiency of using optimized templates made from domestic photopolymer in terms of precision installation of implants of various lengths. Optimization of the design of the surgical navigation template led to a significant increase in the accuracy of implant positioning, which resulted in a decrease in the average displacement values: by 51.48 ± 9.12% in the medio-distal direction, by 39.88 ± 8.05% in the vestibulo-oral direction and by 53.41 ± 4.73% in the vertical direction. In addition, the optimized design provided a higher rigidity of fixation of dental implants during their installation.