Missing Lower First Molar: Minimal Space?

You will need to widen the ridge to at least 7mm to put a wide body (5x10) mm implant in. You would even need to widen the ridge to put in narrow body implants. Unless you perform molar uprighting there appears to be a line of draw problem with putting in two narrow body implants. I would suggest a ridge split procedure to obtain your width with simultaneous placement of a wide body implant.

The narrow ridge means you need to develop the site before placing an implant. If you do not develop the ridge, you will be forced to place a very short implant. The implant will remove the vasculature that helps maintain the thin ridge and in a few years you will have threads exposed on the short implant. I like wide diameter implants, but I would not place one here, I would choose a 4.0 or 4.3 and no more than one. Carlos Boudet, DDS, DICOI

The easiest way to retore this atrophic ridge is to split and expand the ridge and use two 3.2mm wide implants immediately placed with two units of narrow flat occlusal splinted retainers. Dennis Flanagan DDS MSc