Digital Implant PlanningHow the Scan, the Software, and the Surgical Guide Decide the Outcome Before the Drill Touches Bone

Precision and our own lab. The planning, the printing and the quality control all happen under one roof. We run an in-house dental lab and our own 3D printer, so your guide is designed, printed overnight and checked by our own QA team rather than outsourced and shipped. Scanning runs on TRIOS 3Shape with CAD/CAM workflows. Your written quote names your implant tier: Osstem, Dentium or Zimmer at the Preferred tier, Straumann or Nobel Biocare at the Premium tier.

Written Lifetime Warranty | 25+ super-specialists | Forbes India: No.1 Dental Clinic in India | AAID · AAE · BACD · FDI · ISO 9001:2015 | 10-year open file with milestone reviews | Dr. Priyank Sethi, lead clinician.

Read before you decide. Why India for Dental Treatment and Why Stunning Dentistry set out the wider case for treating here. If you are weighing implants abroad against other destinations, see India vs Bali and India vs Turkey, and the evidence on are dental implants abroad safe?

That workflow produced two predictable failure modes:

• Prosthetically-compromised implants. The implant osseointegrated successfully, but the angulation forced the lab to build a screw-retained crown with the access hole through the buccal surface, or to build a cement-retained crown with a bulky cantilever. The crown looked and bit worse, and it was harder to maintain.
• Bone-violation incidents. The surgeon under-estimated proximity to the inferior alveolar nerve, the maxillary sinus, the nasopalatine canal, or an adjacent root. Most went unnoticed at the time and surfaced as paraesthesia, sinus communication, or root resorption months later.

CBCT scanning, planning software and printed guides let your surgeon see both risks before drilling.

Stunning Dentistry uses the Carestream CS 9600 unit.

The full procedure is documented at /treatments/digital-implant-planning/cbct-planning/, including how your scan is read.

2. Guided Implant Surgery

This is the placement step. Once the digital plan is finalised, the software exports a surgical-guide design file. We print the guide overnight in our own lab in dental-grade biocompatible resin, sterilise it and seat it on your teeth on the day of surgery. The guide has metallic sleeves at each implant site that physically constrain the drill to the planned trajectory and depth.

There are two sub-types: static guides, which sit on your teeth and do not move, and dynamic navigation, where the surgeon's drill carries an optical tracker and the implant position is verified in real time on a screen. Dynamic navigation is reserved for full-arch zygomatic placement and complex maxillofacial-prosthetic cases where the printed-guide footprint would obscure access.

The full procedure is documented at /treatments/digital-implant-planning/guided-surgery/, including the static-vs-dynamic decision criteria, the printing tolerances we hold, and the verification protocol that runs at the start of every guided case.

A CBCT scan at a New Zealand clinic costs [figure needed]. Your written NZD quote lists every clinical item before you travel.

• Sinus pneumatisation that was not visible on the panoramic. Posterior maxillary cases that looked routine become sinus-lift cases.
• Inferior alveolar nerve proximity below 2 millimetres. Posterior mandibular cases that looked routine become short-implant cases or guided-position adjustments.
• Lingual concavity in the posterior mandible. The freehand trajectory would have perforated the lingual cortex; the guide angulates the implant 8 to 12 degrees more buccally.
• Buccal bone deficiency in the maxillary anterior. A prosthetically-driven plan calls for slightly palatal placement plus a contour graft.
• Trabecular bone density at D4. Primary stability is predicted to be insufficient for immediate loading; the plan shifts to delayed loading.

Each of those decisions is documented in the planning software, signed by two clinicians and explained to you in the consult.

1. The placing surgeon, an oral and maxillofacial surgeon.

2. The prosthodontist, who reads the scan against your final teeth.

3. The radiology lead, who adds a third read when the inferior alveolar nerve, the maxillary sinus or any pathology is within 3 millimetres of a planned implant.

4. Dr. Priyank Sethi, who countersigns the final plan on every full-arch and every aesthetically critical case.

• If you are within a 90-minute drive of a major New Zealand city, the local scan is useful for planning before you book travel. Most New Zealand radiology centres charge [figure needed] and send the DICOM file by secure transfer, and we review it in your free video consult.
• If the scan is more than two weeks old by the time you arrive, we re-scan in-house. Bone changes, and restorations get added or replaced, so the plan needs a recent scan.
• If you have no New Zealand scan, we take one in-house on day one of your first trip to New Delhi. No New Zealand scan needed.

Send your scan, or book a free video consult first, and we tell you what your plan needs before you plan any travel.