When planning treatment that involves one or more dental implants, your Dr. May choose to create a surgical guide to aid in their planning and placement. It plays an important role in creating a predictable, functional, and aesthetic outcome to ensure your implant or implants last for a long time. A surgical guide is a custom device made to fit over your teeth and gums. That includes indicators for where to place the dental implant or implants in your mouth. The indicators provide the surgical doctor with the exact location, angle, and depth of where your implant or implants should go for the best result. To gather the information needed for the surgical guide, your doctor will first take a cone beam scan of the area to generate a state-of-the-art 3D view of the area where the implant or implants will be placed. Next, your doctor will use a special intraoral camera to digitally scan the inside of your mouth and capture the contours of the tissue and surrounding teeth so the guide is an exact fit. These images are combined in special software that your doctor uses to plot the precise location of the implant or implants and designed the surgical guide accordingly. It is then either sent to a dental laboratory for fabrication, or in some cases milled right in your doctor's office. Once the surgical guide is completed, your doctor will use it to ideally place your implant or implants in a way that provides you with the best long-term treatment outcome.