[A practical method for the determination of the available bone height in oral implantology]

This method puts forward a new and quick process to fix the available height of bone in the recipient site of an endosseous implant. With a flexible strip containing a lot of small equidistant gauged steel spheres, we can quickly reckon up the height of bone. The strip having been placed in the mouth, the patient bites it during the panoramic X-ray examination. The diameter of the spheres is known. On the X-ray photography we can easily measure the spheres and then reckon the available height of bone in the recipient site. This method presents many advantages: the anatomical conditions in the recipient site (specially the height of bone) are known very quickly, in case of contra-indication, this method gets the practitioner out of prescribing new X-ray examinations. So we consider that it is an economical process, an X-ray examination is always realizable with the strip. It is an easy work comparing with TDM.