subject: The Cold Hard Truth About Dental Implants in a day [print this page] The Cold Hard Truth About Dental Implants in a day
There is a great move to implants with immediate loading.
This is where dental implants are placed and a tooth is put on the implant immediately. This should not be confused with immediate implants, where a tooth is removed and an implant placed straight away without a period of healing.
This is a great development as it means you can now have instant teeth in day or can you?
The advantage to both patient and dentist is clear. The patient walks away having had a gap 2 hours or so previously, that is now filled, there are fewer appointments to be made and all the surgery is completed in one appointment.
For the dentist, fewer appointments may reduce the price of the procedure or increase profit, less time spent, you get paid the full amount so better cash flow. You could think this was a win/win situation?
There are many dentists (YouTube is a wash with gory videos) who provide this treatment but little is said about the increased risk of failure, little is said about how much more difficult it is to do this kind of treatment, and little is said about the unpredictable changes in the soft tissues (gum part) and hard tissue (bone).
When a tooth is taken out everything recedes, gums shrink and the bone resorbs and drops down. So one has to estimate this, when aesthetics are not important it's not a big problem and in some cases where the bone and gum is the thick type (biotype) shrinkage is minimal and immediate loading is predictable/desirable.
How often do we get patients like that! Not often enough!
Patients need to be careful and not carried away with all the razzmatazz of having something that sounds like its instant, new and exciting. When a very short wait for healing and then putting a tooth on might sound boring, slow and a wait might in the long term be a better more predictable outcome.
