Are You A Suitable Candidate For Dental Implants?
Although different practitioners will adhere to varying criteria for treatment, we consider both your overall physical health and your oral health in guiding you in making this decision. Your treatment may involve the extraction of a failing tooth/teeth, dental implant placement, bone and soft tissue grafting and it is essential to confirm that you will respond and heal with as few complications as possible.
If you are healthy or have controlled systemic disease, dental implant surgeries can generally be carried out. If you have poorly controlled health issues such as diabetes, heart disease, are taking medications that affect bone metabolism, take medications that affect clotting, these issues need to be assessed and consultation with you health care provider(s) will be necessary.
If you have poorly controlled periodontal (gum) disease, poor home and professional oral hygiene habits and practices or are a heavy smoker (>10 cigarettes per day), your treatment success may be affected and needs to be considered.
What Can You Expect during Your Dental ImpLant Procedure?
Many oral surgery procedures, including dental implants, are carried out under local anaesthetic only. For very anxious patients, oral sedation or anaesthetist-supervised IV sedation can be prescribed.
The vast majority of our implant surgical protocols involve minimally invasive surgical approaches including CBCT/iOS guided implant surgery and restoration. We will discuss this technology-guided approach with you during your personalized consultation.
While a large number of implant surgical procedures can be carried out in one procedure, some cases require multiple steps, depending on your initial presentation. Treatment may be as consolidated as removal of a failing tooth/teeth, implant placement and temporary restoration in one step, to cases that require extractions and bone repair, followed by healing of 4+ months before implant placement.
It is important to remember that while we have high success rates with many immediate protocols, these are at times contraindicated. We will help you understand which approach is best to meet your needs while maintaining high success.
What are the common expectations after treatment?
Most people will recover rapidly from implant surgery with little impact on their short-term activities.
There are always patients who may be more challenged in their healing, experiencing more pain, bruising and swelling, and consequently impacting their return to work, social and physical activities in the early recovery period. However, following our recommended post-surgical care and use of medications that may be prescribed will reduce this likelihood.
Our responsibility is to monitor your healing to ensure that we partner with you through all phases of your care.
