What is involved in the quality of dental implants?

All production processes have quality controls. Quality control function exists primarily as a process for reviewing the product specifications defined by engineering and to provide assistance to the manufacturing department to ensure that production achieves the established standards.

In dentistry, as for any medical device, these controls can have very demanding specifications.

If we believe in quality as the cornerstone of production, posts and prosthetic abutments have to pass several quality controls in the course of the production process.

One control is at the level of the equipment, in the mechanical lathes. With a control log prepared by the quality assurance engineers, the different specifications and dimensions, and the frequency of controls are reviewed. These specifications are checked by the operators and the quality control personnel. For example, in the case of posts, there may be more than 30 dimensions to check at a certain frequency, in addition to the pre-production and post-production controls, where we review the first pieces produced and pieces selected randomly at the end of each production cycle.

Following the process, after the pieces go through different cleaning and polishing processes, among others, we come to another quality control, the most exhaustive control of all. This control is known as the 100% control and consists of reviewing all the pieces one by one, i.e. 100% of the production batch. We don’t review so many specifications here, we review the most critical points of each piece.

This review process is what allows us to claim that we have checked all of our products, thus ensuring compliance with the requirements.

On the other hand, when talking about quality we cannot overlook health certifications, such as ISO 13458 and CE marking for medical devices. In these cases an external agency conducts an audit to examine, control, and verify the processes and safety of the product to determine whether quality protocols are satisfied. Certification objectively verified the entire production process.

Thus, given the market trends in dentistry and the recent emergence of low-cost products, we believe firmly in product quality as a differential element. After all, product quality directly affects the welfare of patients.