Smart Abutments

We are very excited to be able to offer this new cost effective system of Titanium and Zirconia custom abutments.

Talented ceramist required

We Have Moved

We have now moved to the new lab so if you are planning on popping in or sending us anything, you'll need the new address which is:

Ambridge Ceramics
Premier House
Kiln Court...
College Road
Ripon
North Yorkshire
HG4 2BP

All the existing phone numbers etc. are now working as normal.

Thankyou for your patience during our move.

Ambridge Ceramics presents at ADi National Focus Meeting November 2014

This year the focus was on Digital Dentistry and the growing use of CAD/CAM restorative solutions within implant dentistry.

We'd like to firstly thank everyone for the fantastic feedback and positive comments on the day, but also present a few of the key slides again here as they answer the most common questions that came to us after the presentation.

There is so much information entering the profession regarding the developments of Digital Dentistry and CAD/CAM but unfortunately this does seem to leave some confusion over some key benefits, and exactly why the move to Digital or CAD/CAM can be so beneficial when restoring implants.

Below are a few questions we received and we will try to provide as clear an answer as we can, based upon our years of experience with a very wide range of CAD/CAM system, services and partners out there.

Is CAD/CAM really more accurate?

This recent study again confirms that the fit of CAD/CAM structures (both Zr and Ti tested here) were significantly better than that of cast frameworks, the results of this study are below:-

The microgap between the Zirconia beam and the abutments was between 10-26 μm,

The microgap between the Titanium beam and abutments was between 6-18 μm,

The ‘misfit' of the Cast metal beam was between 181-301 μm.

The team are supporting Save the Children by sporting their Christmas Jumpers

We're all set for Christmas jumper day tomorrow!

The team from the lab are all set for Christmas Jumper Day tomorrow in aid of Save the Children International If you cannot wear a jumper then why not let us do it for you and support the cause by donating £2 by texting TEAMAMBRIDGE to 70050. Or better still wear your own and setup your page by visiting www.christmasjumperday.org

Tis the season of good wool..........

Ambridge Ceramics Christmas 2014 Closure Dates

We just want to make sure that all our clients get plenty of notice so we can ensure no patients are left without their smiles for Christmas.

You can also download the pdf to print and put up on your wall by clicking the link below.

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/3248981/Christmas%20Closing%202014.pdf

Ambridge Ceramics continues to back The British Bite Mark

The Dental Laboratories Association are increasing their campaign of The British Bite Mark, a campaign that aims to raise public awareness of where their medical devices are made and as Ambridge Ceramics were one of the earliest members of the scheme we wanted to explain a little more about how we see The British Bite Mark benefitting the public and surgeons that choose to use a high quality lab.

The vast majority of the public are not aware of the different standards of traceability and skill required by each nation that produces dental restorations but in the UK the GDC and MHRA have gone to great lengths to protect patient safety by demanding high levels of traceability, compliance, professionalism and a commitment to quality of care to patients from their members.

Because all this regulation has been laid out by these bodies solely to protect patients, it seems a good idea to ensure your restorations are made by technicians that have to be registered with and answer to these bodies.

However there are many dental restorations that leave the UK and this protective framework to be made in countries which do not have the same standards or traceability requirements, often without the knowledge of the patient who will have the medical device fitted.

This is not a simply case of trying to claim that work from one country is good and that from another is bad, but simply asking why the work is being sent offshore? If it is for economical reasons then is the patient fully aware of the option to have the work made within the protective framework setup by a skilled, GDC registered technician and what they are getting for their money?

Is the patient benefitting financially from the cheaper work being made by a lab in a country that is not regulated by the GDC or MHRA? Or is the decision being made on their behalf and they are not being given the opportunity to make a choice between saving money or having the peace of mind knowing that their restorations were made by a skilled GDC registered professional?

The key to the whole issue is patient information and consent. If the patient is aware of all the information and still prefers to save money on their medical devices then that is fine, it's simply like the medical tourism which we have seen over the years.

However it's not maybe as obvious for that when many patients are unaware that their restorations were not made by a GDC registered technician within the protective system setup by the MHRA and GDC.

These people are unfortunately unwitting medical tourists who have not had the opportunity to be presented with the facts and weigh up the cost/benefits for themselves.

We live in a massive global economy and there is undoubtedly a benefit to using cheaper labour to keep production costs low, I think we are all aware that most of the technological devices etc. and many of the things we use every day are made this way?

But when we select medical devices and things we consume maybe we would make different choices if the fact were presented to us? The recent spate of health scares seems to indicate that some of the cost cutting in these areas has not been in the best interests of the consumers.

Although we don't agree with medical tourism (especially after seeing some of the shocking results that we have had to fix along with our skilled surgeons when some of these patients have come back to them after things have gone wrong) I can see why some people choose the apparent cost savings up front. However, I don't think it can ever be right that a patient becomes an accidental medical tourist because they are having restorations fitted that they are unaware have been made in an unregulated country.

At Ambridge Ceramics we have ploughed hundreds of thousand of pounds into new technology and technician training to continually improve the service we provide to our surgeons and patients, along with submitting to further voluntary independent inspection by a 3rd party assessor to ensure we meet the DAMAS standard ensuring we meet the highest possible levels of traceability and conformity on all our technician training and materials used.

Joining The British Bite Mark was just another logical step in our commitment at Ambridge Ceramics to providing our surgeons with the highest level of quality, traceability, service and support available in the UK, we passionately believe that the standards required to work as a GDC registered technician in UK labs are among the highest in the world and the work that comes out of our lab is also among the best seen anywhere in the world.

If you are a surgeon that uses a British Bite Mark laboratory then please don't waste the opportunity to promote this to your patients, it's a mark of the commitment to excellent quality and service you provide. It may also help to explain to the patient why your service could be slightly more expensive than the practice down the road. Are they offering the same exceptional levels of quality and care?

You are offering a superior level of service, quality and traceability, so why not make that clear to the patient? Be proud to stand out and be known for focussing on offering the very best quality and service you possibly can.

We have patient information booklets available that you can get by giving Sean a call on 01765 607347 or by contacting The Dental Laboratories Association directly by following this link

So when the campaign hits full swing and more patients start to ask "What's in my mouth?" you will be able to point to The British Bite Mark and demonstrate your commitment to offering restorations that are made in a lab, governed by the MHRA and produced by a GDC registered professional dental technician.

The Dental Laboratories Association have launched a dedicated British Bite Mark website that surgeons can use to find a laboratory but more importantly they have ensures that patients can find a surgeon that can supply them with these British Bite Mark restorations.

Please look at the site and ensure you are listed, this is something we have already started to do this for all clients of Ambridge Ceramics.

Ambridge Ceramics fly the flag for Great British Dentistry and The British Bite Mark

The team at Ambridge Ceramics have been working together with our surgeons for over a year on the Pre launch for the official UK release of Dentsply Implants Atlantis porcelain fused to titanium screw retained crown units prior to their official launch at the end of 2014.

We are proud to confirm that some of this work will be presented at the EAO in Rome from the 25th to the 27th September 2014

The cases selected had the planning, implant placement and final crown delivery by both Dr Tim Doswell and Dr Kostas Papadopoulos and the laboratory stages were carried out by Lee Nichols & Steve campbell in the CAD design, then milled by Atlantis in Sweden. The ceramic crowns were made by both Mark Ambridge and Jack Gleave who layered these with Creation Ti ceramic. The composite layering was carried out by Iain Baldwin using the Visiolign system from Bredent.

These cases will be highlighting both the clinical and financial advantages of moving to these new implant crowns, regardless of which materia you choose to layer onto the biocompatible titanium crown abutment.

It's a great opportunity for us as a British Bite Mark laboratory to show the leading work that the UK dental profession can produce using the latest CADCAM technology and using the skills and knowledge of an experienced team.

AmbridgeCeramics_BritishBiteMark_EAO2014

This early involvement with Dentsply implants has meant that clients of Ambridge Ceramics have been the first in the UK to offer their patients the benefits and proven aesthetics of porcelain fused to metal crowns but with the benefit of the substructure being titanium, which is proven to have higher biocompatibility than cast alloys or chrome.

Atlantis_titanium_crown_abutment_Ambridge

As always, by using the latest CAD/CAM milling solutions we are able to ensure that not only are these crowns clinically superior to those previously available, they are also more cost effective, showing that when CADCAM technology is combined with the skill of the technicians in a British Bite Mark laboratory the results can be ideal for the patients.

There is still some confusion over how these modern techniques are more cost effective so we've tried to break it down below to show a comparisson of the old cast techniques vs. the new CADCAM milled titanium structures offered by Dentsply Atlantis.

The reason for the confusion is that traditional pricing is actually quite confusing. You need to combine all the lab costs, alloy and then the separate billing for the components needed to make the crown from the implant companies, and this bill will usually arrive separately from the work as it's ordered on your account and billed on the day the implant company sends it to the lab.

This leaves your admin team with alot of separate bills to tie up. Here's an example of the true cost of an traditional screw retained implant crown.

So when all the costs are combined, it's pretty expensive! And that is using either casting alloy or cast chrome, neither of which are as biocompatible as the titanium option Dentsply Atlantis crowns offer.So here's how the costs break down on the new Atlantis titanium crowns.

And we were deliberately conservative on the calculations of alloy required for the conventional screw retained crown in order to offer as fair a comparison as possible. The truth is that many cases are actually larger and this impacts the case costs considerably, as shown below.

In fact on average we save our clients around £140 per implant crown we restore using Dentsply Atlantis titanium Crowns, which can soon add up to alot of money saved a year. It's also a simple consistent cost regardless of your implant system, so you always know what the total cost of restoring your implants will be when quoting your patients.

Now you may not necessarily want to spend that saved £7000 on a watch, it was just an example of where your wasted money could have gone. But the key point is that this cost saving per implant quickly adds up to a substantial sum of money, which is better in your bank than the implant manufacturer and alloys companies.As a British Bite Mark laboratory we are always pushing to ensure our clients get the very best in quality and service. Using the latest technology provided by proven industry leading partners we have continually shown that this doesn't have to cost you any more, in fact we have always brought a significant cost saving to our clients with all the CADCAM services we have developed at the lab.

The titanium screw retained crowns will be officially available to the UK late 2014 but we will continue to offer this and many other unique solutions to our clients up until their official launch date.

For more information or to order your screw retained implant crowns you can either contact us by email

sean@www.ambridgeceramics.co.uk or Call Sean on 01765 607347.

You can also download our labcards and postage labels directly from here and send your case into us.

Ambridge Ceramics produce digitally planned implant stent

The team were fortunate enough to be asked to contribute their knowledge of Digital Dentistry and CAD/CAM restorations to a challenging case that Dr Mark Willings carried out using the immediate loading technique with his team at Dental Excellence Harewood.
It's always very satisfying to see such great result when working with new implant systems and techniques.
We've been working with the Dental Wings system for many years now to create digital scans of our implant cases, and it's a fantastic system that just gets better year on year.

The case was planned and produced here in the UK, which is a great example of a British Bite Mark laboratory always pushing forward and using the latest technology for our surgeons and their patients.

You can read the full print article using the link below
https://www.dropbox.com/s/vm81oke26nnmicg/Gerald%20Crane%20case.pdf?dl=0