Custom Impression Coping for an Exact Registration of the Healed Tissue in the Esthetic Implant Restoration

It is well known that guided soft tissue healing with a provisional restoration is essential to obtain optimal anterior esthetics in the implant prosthesis. What is not well known is how to transfer a record of beautiful anatomical ly healed tissue to the laboratory. With the advent of emergence profile healing abutments and corresponding impression copings, there has been a dramatic improvement over the original 4.0-mm diameter design. This is a great improvement, however, it still does not accurately transfer a record of anatomically healed tissue, which is often triangularly shaped, to the laboratory, because the impression coping is a round cylinder. This article explains how to fabricate a custom impression coping that is an exact record of anatomically healed tissue for accurate duplication. This technique is sign ificant because it allows an even closer replication of the natural dentition.