The abutment: the part that decides whether your gum stays quiet
Stock abutments come in standard sizes. Custom ones are milled to your mouth. The difference shows up at the gum line, in food trapping, and in inflammation years later.
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The abutment is the middle part: it screws into the fixture in the bone and rises through the gum to carry the crown. It is easy to skip past on a quote and it is the part a patient lives with most closely, because it is the only component in permanent contact with soft tissue.
Stock
Stock abutments are mass-produced in standard sizes. They fit the fixture perfectly, because that is a manufactured interface, and they fit your gum approximately, because your gum is not a standard size. Where the abutment’s shape and the gum’s shape disagree, small gaps are left at the margin. The clinic’s material lists the consequences plainly: more peri-implantitis, more chance of the prosthesis fracturing, and more food trapping.
Custom
A custom abutment is designed and milled for the individual site, accounting for your tooth shape and your gum contour. The claimed result is the inverse of the list above: less peri-implantitis, a prosthesis shaped to your own gum, less food trapping.
The screw hole
Most implant crowns are held by a screw, and the screw is reached through a small hole in the biting surface, filled afterwards. Patients sometimes see it and assume something has gone wrong. It has not: it is what allows the crown to be unscrewed and the abutment serviced without destroying anything. A cemented crown has no hole and cannot be removed cleanly. Which one you get is a decision, and it is worth being told which was made.
- Stock, made
- To standard sizes, in volume.
- Stock, stated downsides
- More peri-implantitis, higher fracture risk, more food trapping.
- Custom, made
- Milled for the individual tooth and gum.
- Custom, stated upsides
- Less peri-implantitis, gum-matched shape, less food trapping.
- Access hole
- Present on screw-retained crowns. Filled, and a feature rather than a fault.
Clinical photographs
This article is information, not medical advice, and reading it does not create a doctor-patient relationship. The Seoul Glow is a registered facilitator: we coordinate care, we do not practise medicine and we do not decide what treatment is right for you. No outcome can be guaranteed by anyone. Discuss any procedure with a licensed physician who has examined you.
