My Dental Implant Surgery

About two years ago I had a dental implant, and I can highly recommend this procedure for anyone whose dentist says that he or she is a good candidate. The main benefit of an implant is that the replacement tooth will be just as strong as a natural tooth. This is because the implant, which is made of titanium, actually makes a chemical bond with the bone in the jaw. The downside of the procedure is that it can take a long time. In my case it took about ten months, and this was because my dentist wanted to be sure that my mouth had completely healed from the tooth extraction and that the implant had firmly bonded to the bone. I have seen recent advertisements from dentists who claim they can do an implant in one day. How this is possible I do not know, perhaps it is a different implant procedure from the one I had.

My implant saga started out innocently enough. I went to the dentist’s office for a routine six month exam and cleaning. The hygienist was checking my gums by pushing down on them with a dental tool, and she found that the gums next to one tooth on my lower right in the back of my mouth receded abnormally below the gum surface. This indicated a problem, and so an x-ray of the tooth was taken. It was obvious from the x-ray that about half the root on one side of that tooth was gone, as if it had been eaten away. My dentist said that it appeared my body was rejecting my tooth, a condition he had only seen a handful of times in thirty years of practice. He said this can happen because the tooth experienced some sort of trauma, but I don’t recall anything in particular. In any case he said the tooth was infected and would start aching soon, and it had to be removed.

He explained my options for replacing the tooth which came down to two choices. One was a bridge, and I knew about bridges because I have had one on the other side of my mouth since the age of eighteen. I was more intrigued when he described a newer technology, dental implants, and explained about how the replacement tooth would be just as strong as a natural tooth. The only drawback was that apparently in some cases the implant does not work. This can happen from 5-10% of the time. My family dentist does not do these implants, so he suggested I visit a specialist, a periodontist, to discuss the possibilities in more detail. The periodontist explained the procedure and gave me a thorough examination. He concluded I was a good candidate, and I chose to opt for the implant rather than a bridge. The cost for both was about the same, and it turned out that my dental insurance would cover about half the price of either one. I eventually paid about $2,000 out of pocket.

Click on Part 2 of the article in the Article Director at upper left.