comparison of the dimensional accuracy of two polyvinyl siloxane putty-wash techniques and digital impressions for single implants adjacent to tooth crown preparations

Objective: this study compared the dimensional accuracy of two polyvinyl siloxane putty-wash impression techniques with the digital impression method for single implants adjacent to tooth crown preparations.methods: impressions were taken from a dental arch containing a full-metal preparation on the first molar adjacent to a straumann tissue-level implant at the second premolar site. a laboratory scanner generated a standard tessellation language (stl) file as the reference for comparisons. three methods were tested, each performed 10 times: (1) one-step putty-wash technique, (2) two-step putty-wash technique, and (3) digital impressions. dimensional accuracy was assessed by measuring overall die dimensions, die height, die width, and the tooth-implant distance, using geomagic wrap software. statistical analyses included one-way anova and the kruskal-wallis test, with significance at p < 0.05.results: no significant differences were found among the methods for the die height (p = 0.130), die width (p = 0.180), and tooth-implant distance (p = 0.486). however, the digital impression method showed significantly greater overall dimensional accuracy than the one-step putty-wash technique (p = 0.004). the two-step putty-wash method showed no significant difference with the one-step method or digital impressions concerning the overall die accuracy (p > 0.05).conclusions: digital impressions demonstrated significantly higher overall dimensional accuracy than the one-step putty-wash technique. die height, die width, and tooth-implant distance were comparable across methods. digital impressions are recommended for optimal accuracy when taking impressions from single implants adjacent to tooth crown preparations. the two-step putty-wash method offers a reliable alternative when digital tools are unavailable.