Displacement of Customized Abutments Designed on a Working Cast and in the Oral Cavity: A Comparative In Vivo Study.

PURPOSE: To compare abutment displacement between the virtual, customized abutment that was designed on a cast and the customized abutment prepared in the oral cavity. MATERIALS AND METHODS: Eleven patients were selected for a single posterior implant prosthetic treatment. The impression was obtained using the closed tray impression method with a vinyl polysiloxane material using a custom tray. The standard tessellation language files of the customized abutment that was designed using the computer-aided design system and acquired with an intraoral scanner in the oral cavity were superimposed and analyzed for distance and angle displacement using the three-dimensional inspection analysis program (Geomagic Control X). In the statistical analysis, distance and angle displacement values were analyzed with the Kruskal-Wallis H test (alpha = 0.05), and a post hoc comparison was performed using the Mann-Whitney U-test and Bonferroni correction method. RESULTS: The mean distance and angle displacement of the 15 customized abutments were 89.52 +/- 66.86 microm and 0.83 +/- 1.21 degrees , respectively. There were significant differences in distance displacement (p < 0.001), and angle displacement (p < 0.001) among the 15 customized abutments, and there were no significant differences in angle displacement along the 4 directions (p = 0.735). CONCLUSIONS: The displacement values of the customized abutments evaluated in the oral cavity differed significantly from patient to patient.