Dental Implant Surgery

Who does it?
● Cosmetic Dentist

What is it?
Missing teeth can cause a lot of distress, for both aesthetic and functional reasons – wearing a set of false teeth before the age of seventy is not only embarrassing but it can make both eating and talking very difficult.

Dental implants offer a long- term solution to the problem of missing teeth – they can be used to replace just one or two of the more visible teeth or, in extreme cases, to create a whole new set of gnashers.

The implants themselves are made of titanium and are used to replace the root portion of the tooth, being anchored into a hole which has been drilled in your jaw bone.

These implants are then used to support crowns or bridges, or to secure a denture in place.

Who is suitable?
Dental implants can be put in at any age and can be used to replace any number of missing teeth – although it can get quite costly to fill your whole mouth with implants.

The one important stipulation is that you must have enough bone tissue in your jaw. The dentist or surgeon you choose will check that before commencing any treatment and if you don’t have sufficient tissue, don’t despair – they can perform a bone graft.

It is also very important that the practitioner thoroughly checks your oral health, as any gum disease or tooth decay must be dealt with before the implants are placed.

What’s the treatment like?
The whole process can take up to six months, although it is possible to get it done more quickly – see below.

If you’re having a bridge made, particularly if your implants will fill a whole jaw, you may need to have moulds made, to ensure that the bridge matches the shape and size of your jaw.

To make the holes for the implants to fit in, a cut is made in the gum and then a hole is drilled into the jawbone. The implant will be screwed tightly into this hole.

The implant has to heal and integrate with your existing bone tissue, which is the part of the process that can take longest, so many practitioners will offer dentures or temporary crowns until such time as the more permanent solution can be fitted.

Finally, once the implants have fully integrated with your jaw, the permanent tooth replacement is fitted on to the titanium base and you have a brand new smile.

What happens afterwards?
There might be some swelling and discomfort around the implant to begin with, but that should soon heal. Dental implants offer a permanent solution, and most patients find their lives transformed.

Will I have a scar?
There is no visible scarring.

Dr Vijay’s One Day Smile Protocol
Everybody does implant dentistry in their own way. I looked at it from the patient perspective and took away the things they don’t want.

Once you’ve made the decision to invest in a new set of teeth, you don’t want to be walking round with dentures for the next three weeks, you want your new teeth straightaway. So I knew we needed to be totally focused on implant dentistry, in order to be able to offer as quick and efficient a service as possible.

We are a strictly implant-only oral reconstruction centre, with our own lab onsite and all the equipment we need, which means we can do things much more smoothly than anyone else.

The other big thing was a fixed pricing policy. Patients want to know exactly what they'll be paying from the outset, with no hidden costs.

So we set up a structure whereby you pay £8,500 if you have no teeth and £10,500 if you've got some teeth, no matter how complex your requirements.

And of course the most important thing is the ability to perform the surgery to a very high standard and to be predictable. Patients are paying a lot of money for this and it needs to be perfect.

At EvoDental, the patient comes in at nine in the morning to be prepared for surgery. At about half past five that same day, we’ll do the final fit, and then I give them an apple and say ‘bite that’. www.evodental.com