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Today on Enamel Pearls, we're going to go through a great way to control depth when
drilling for dental implants. There are a lot of bad things that can happen if you don't
control your depth. You can pierce the inferior alveolar nerve, you can hit the mental foramen,
you could pierce the sinus, you can go through the floor of the mouth. In other words, drilling
carelessly is a great way to have a bad day.
Let me show you a great product that we've used for two years to control our depth when
drilling. This is the Zimmer Drill Stop Kit. These well-designed sleeves fit over the drills
and create a ledge that prevents drilling past the intended depth. They can be placed
on short or long drills from Zimmer tapered screw vent kit, corresponding with the 8,
10, 11?, 13 and 16 mm lines.
To use the drill stops, we push each color-coded drill into the matching drill stop sleeve,
which then clicks into place. A couple of notes to make this kit more user friendly:
First, make sure you're careful about putting the sleeves back into the right spot.
Second, double-check the exposed part of the drill and make sure that you have the intended
length. When you combine depth control with accurate measurements from a CT scan, you
have a nice, safe protocol that makes for sweat-free implant placement.
For more dental how-to's, go to our channel at YouTube Enamel Pearls.