Purpose:
The aim of this study was to investigate the performance of a novel 3D-printed cooling system for drilling templates during fully guided implant insertion.

Methods:
Dental implant tunnel preparations were performed for the Straumann Bone Level implant in a 3D-printed synthetic resin model using either conventional guided or modified 3D-printed guided (with a cooling channel leading directly to the implantation site) drilling templates. Temperature measurements were performed with and without cooling at drill depths of 2, 4, 7, and 10 mm.

Results:
For all drill depths and templates, cooling had a statistically significant (p < 0.001) influence on the measured mean temperature. ANOVA and Bonferroni correction revealed that there was a statistically significant (p < 0.001) difference in the cooling efficiency of the samples cooled with all the templates in comparison with that of the samples not cooled. The maximum temperature measured with the conventional template was 35.2° without cooling and 26.6 °C with cooling at depths of 2 and 10 mm, respectively. For the modified template, the maximum temperature reached 39.1 °C without cooling and 31.2 °C with cooling at depths of 10 and 2 mm, respectively.

Conclusions:
Compared with the conventional cooling system, the newly developed internal cooling channel of the modified drill template did not lead to a better cooling effect.