ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Dent. Med.
Sec. Reconstructive Dentistry
Assessing the Precision of 3D-Printed Surgical Templates in Oral Implant Placement: A Comparison of Half and Full-Guided Approaches
Provisionally accepted
- 1Sichuan University, Chengdu, China
- 2Guangyuan Stomatological Hospital, Guangyuan, China
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Background: Digital guided implantology improves safety and precision compared to freehand methods. A survey indicated that half-guided templates are more commonly used than full-guided ones in China. This study aims to assess the accuracy of implant placements using half-guided and full-guided digital surgical templates, considering factors like jaw location, tooth position, support type, implant timing, and bone density. Methods: 87 implants (52 half-guided, 35 full-guided) were evaluated by comparing pre-and postoperative CBCT scans to measure deviations in coronal, apical, depth, and angular positions. Bone density was also assessed in relation to the implant deviations. Results: The findings revealed that the half-guided group exhibited significantly greater deviations in several areas: maxillary angular deviations, anterior coronal and depth deviations, posterior depth deviations, tooth-supported guide depth deviations, immediate implant coronal and angular deviations, and delayed implant depth deviations (P < 0.05). No significant differences were noted in other measurements. In the bone density analysis, only the full-guided group showed a significant negative correlation between bone density and apical deviation (P < 0.05). Conclusion: Based on statistical results, power calculations, and subgroup effect sizes, the following clinical recommendations are derived: Half-guided templates, owing to their superior cost-effectiveness in fabrication time and cost, are recommended for use in mandibular posterior regions, mucosa-supported templates, delayed implantations, and clinical scenarios with uneven bone density distribution at implant sites. In contrast, full-guided templates are more suitable for maxillary implantations, anterior regions, tooth-supported templates, immediate implantations, and sites with homogeneous bone density distribution.
Keywords: half-guided surgical template, fully guided surgical template, digital surgical template, accuracy, Oral implantology, Bone Density
Received: 06 Sep 2025; Accepted: 05 Nov 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Lin, Su, Chen, Wang, He, Lan and Jing. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Baohui Su, sbh1004@scu.edu.cn
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