OT Equator Implant Abutment
Rhein83 USA
With a low vertical profile of 2.1 mm and diameter of 4.4 mm, the OT Equator is the smallest attachment system on the market.
The OT Equator is Rhein83 USA’s newest line of low-profile, castable, and direct implant overdenture attachments. With a low vertical profile of 2.1 mm and diameter of 4.4 mm, the OT Equator is able to fit into the smallest spaces. This system offers multiple solutions for overdenture treatment planning when vertical space limitations are a consideration.
The OT Equator is available in 4 versions—castable, prefabricated titanium, threaded for CAD/ CAM milled-bar connections, and “Elastic Seeger” used with Equator implant abutments for passive bar connections—which are fully compatible with any implant brand and manufactured with cuff heights from .5 mm to 7 mm. The female caps are retained by a stainless steel housing, ranging in 4 levels of retention, making it easy to process at the dental laboratory or chairside. A complete line of OT Equator accessories and tools are also available, including a hand driver and insertion tool.
Rhein83 USA provided 6 Dental Product Shopper evaluators with OT Equator solutions to use on implant patients in their practices. They ranked such features as the clinical advantage of its small size as well as patient comfort.
Chairside
All 6 of the evaluators rated the OT Equator’s compatibility with their implant system as excellent. One of the evaluators said: “The use was easy and worked well with my Nobel product. The snap caps were easy to use and change, as well.” Another evaluator added, “The product is packaged well with all of the necessary components for processing in one place.”
Dentists rated the OT Equator’s stability/retention, with 5 calling it excellent, and 1 calling it very good. An evaluator with 14 years of experience liked the “excellent retention and ease of manipulation,” calling the OT Equator a” user-friendly system.”
Patient comfort was rated as excellent by 5 evaluators and very good by 1.
Ease of Use
All 6 of the evaluators rated the ease of insertion of the OT Equator attachments as excellent. A Virginia-based dentist said: “It was specially nice that when the overdenture is inserted you don’t get the ‘rubbery’ feeling you sometimes get with other similar abutments. Here, the sensation was more of a click or a snap, therefore there is no doubt when the prosthesis is seated all the way.”
Regarding the OT Equator’s ability to accommodate 24 degrees of divergence, 3 evaluators called it excellent, and 3 declined to rate this feature because of the specifics of their particular cases.
In ranking the clinical advantage of small size, half of the evaluators rated the OT Equator excellent, and half rated it very good. One of the evaluators stated: “The small size was the key. It was also easy to insert and set in the denture”
An evaluator with 19 years of experience in dentistry said “[The OT Equator is a] very good product, but the patient is having some trouble locating proper seating position of denture on attachments.” This same evaluator rated his overall satisfaction as very good.
Accessories
The usefulness of the hand driver was rated as excellent by 4, as very good by 1, and fair by 1. One of the evaluators mentioned, “The driver should have a top that spins to allow easier use when screwing the attachments to the implants.” Another evaluator, who rated his overall satisfaction as very good, said: “The square hand driver works well, but it unfortunate to have to have another driver just dedicated to this type of abutment. Why not design it to use the same driver as you might use for another abutment?”
Evaluators also rated the usefulness of insertion tool. Three evaluators called the tool excellent, and 3 called it very good.
Overall Satisfaction
When asked to rate their overall satisfaction with the OT Equator system, 4 called it excellent, and 2 called it very good. All of the evaluators said they would definitely or probably purchase the product in the future. One of the evaluators, who has 16 years of experience in dentistry, said: “[It is an] extremely small abutment in area, but still manages to have very nice tactile feel for insertion of the overdenture. It has a very ‘secure’ snapping sensation when the overdenture is inserted; not what you would expect for such a small abutment. [It has] great retention with just a regular plastic insert.”
Another dentist said, “Overall, this product made it easy on both me and my patient!” A third added: “A very nice system. Nice to know that there are some good abutment choices available for your daily practice to support an overdenture.”
