A dental implant is a screw that is placed into the bone to serve as a replacement for the root of a tooth or a group of teeth. An abutment or support goes on top of the implant for the crown to rest upon.

You should do what you would be doing prior to getting a filling, deep cleaning, or extraction. Just relax. If you are getting IV sedation during surgery, then do not eat anything 6 hours before the surgery.

YES! We always welcome additional relevant information to improve our service to you. However, we will need to take our own current x-rays and possible CT the day before or during treatment to have the best pictures for your service.

Our surgeon has been trained to evaluate your medical conditions prior to your treatment. They have certain contraindications they will look for prior to treatment. So, if you wish to have a physical you may; however, it is not necessary under normal circumstances.

In most cases: NO. The only issues that may arise are during radiation therapy and with conditions such as diabetes that are not under control. Our trained surgeon will evaluate you during your dental exam.

In most cases, it will take about two treatment appointments which last for about 1-2 hours per appointment. Our surgeon will be able to give you a more specific time frame when he has access to your oral conditions.

Some of our surgeons have taken about 30 minutes for one implant and about 3 hours for a complete mouth reconstruction. Again, it will depend on the complexity of your treatment. We will do our best to make you as comfortable as possible.

Antibiotics are like seat belts in a car. You take them for extra precautions to prevent infection before and after surgery. The pain medication we prescribe is to increase your comfort. Some patients find that they do not need any pain medication.

IV (intravenous) sedation has been very popular in our clinic. The sedation will increase comfort. The cost of IV sedation is about $800 for the first hour to cover the medication and service.

Nitrous sedation (“laughing gas”) is always available for all of our patients during treatment. There is a cost associated with providing the service.

Almost always there will be some tissue or bone grafting. Remember that when you have lost your tooth, there is a high possibility of tissue and bone loss. Even taking an extraction out will cause damage to adjacent bone that may also need bone and tissue grafting.

The dental implants we use are made of titanium and are FDA approved. Titanium implants have been used since the 1950’s because of their high biocompatibility (“bonds well with bone”) and close-to-bone elasticity (“flexibility”). Therefore, there is a high chance of success. Below is a research abstract providing data on the successes of implants:

Misch CE, Dietsh-Misch F, Hoar J, Beck G, Hazen R, Misch CM.

ABSTRACT
This report presents the data from a prospective study of a bone quality based implant system. The surgical survival of 975 implants was 99.4%, with 100% survival in D4 bone. Three critical phases of bone loss were identified: bone remodeling from stage I to stage II surgery; stage II uncovery to prosthesis delivery (transition period); and prosthesis delivery up to the first year loading (early loading bone loss). The stage I to stage II uncovery crestal bone remodeling resulted in a mean vertical bone loss of .021 mm to 0.36 mm (SD = 0.90 mm), dependent on whether the implant became exposed to the oral cavity during osseous healing. No statistically significant difference was found among the four implant designs, implant diameter, bone density or location. The stage II uncovery to prosthesis delivery mean vertical bone loss ranged from 0.12 mm to 0.20 mm. One hundred three consecutive patients were restored, with 360 implants and 105 prosthesis in function for a period of 12 to 26 months. No early loading implant failure occurred. The mean early loading bone loss was 0.29 mm (SD = 0.99 mm). Past clinical reports indicate most failures or crestal bone loss occur by the first year of loading. This study suggests the bone quality based dental implant design minimizes overall failure and crestal bone loss, regardless of bone density.

©J Oral Implantol. 1999;25(3):185-197.

If your INR (International Normalize Ratio) is 2 or less then we can do treatment. We can test for you INR at the office on the day of your treatment. If your INR is above 2, you need to consult your physician. Sometime doctors will put you on Heparin instead of your regular blood thinner. Heparin can be stopped an hour before surgery. Other times they may take you off your blood thinner for a day or two before surgery. Again you INR must be 2 or less.

Generally the rule of thumb is to get off the medication for 8 weeks before surgery and wait another 8 weeks after surgery before taking the medication again. You should consult your physician. IV sedation for bone loss will be on a case-to-case basis.

We try to use autograft (your own harvested bone and tissue), so in this case there will be no problem. The allograft we use (not your tissue and bone) have blood cells removed, so there will be no Rh sensitivity.

Plate Enrich Plasma treatment may assist the bone and tissue healing. Your blood is taken and centrifuged to concentrate the healing factors. The healing factors are delivered to the surgery site. Evidence based research has shown that PRP treatment does increase healing. We provide this at our dental center.

We do not reduce quality or service to get a value cost. We get the value by analyzing and improving our surgical process on every surgery day. Our doctors are like scientists and engineers combined. They will use the best materials and spend the appropriate time to service our clients. They will use their problem solving abilities learned through experience and continuing education to adapt to each unique patient.

Technically YES! However, it depends on how far you are in your orthodontic treatment and if any missing teeth are close to their final plan position. Placed in implants will not move like natural teeth because they are osseointegrated (“fused”) to the surrounding bone.

– Ask yourself this question. Do you use a pin to hang a picture on the wall or the appropriately sized screw? The implant has to be a reasonable size to structurally handle the chewing forces of the mouth and anchor to the quality of bone at the implant site. We find that mini implants are not appropriately sized or designed to meet our needs of quality and longevity.

NO! Our dental implants are made of titanium which is a paramagnetic metal. Paramagnetic metals interact weakly with electric fields so they will not set off metal detectors. Therefore, credit cards, like the American Express Black, are made of titanium.

Yes. We will engineer the placement and contacts of the opposing teeth to appropriately distribute the biting forces. Furthermore, we will highly recommend a mouth guard at night to prevent grinding. Most grinding occurs during the sleeping hours of the night.

– Dental implants are reversible. We can remove them if they fail, and place in another implant at the same location with a different design and size or place in another implant at an adjacent site. Like getting on a plane, it is very successful yet may include risks.

Porcelain gum and teeth will not stain, are stronger, last longer, and appear more realistic then acrylic gum and teeth. Imagine a porcelain bowl verse a plastic acrylic bowl: which stains more? – acrylic. Acrylic teeth and gum will last about 5-7 years, and porcelain gum and teeth are more likely to last beyond that time frame.

We recommend relaxing after the surgery. We will give you prescriptions for medications (antibiotic, pain, mouth rinse) and a ice pack to take home with you to apply to the surgery site to prevent swelling. Try not to sleep on the side of the surgery site. However, some of our patients have gone golfing or shopping after their surgery.

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