Dental Implant Placed with Poor Bone Implant
Posted by writeradmin
Question submitted by: Benjamin
I need some advice on what to do. When I went into my dental implant procedure, my dentist assured me we were in good shape. However, when I woke up from the surgery he then told me that it turned out I didn’t have enough bone structure for the dental implant. He went ahead and placed the implant anyway but thinks I need to remove it because it is going to fail and then he can replace my tooth with a dental bridge. Why would he place it if he knew I’d need to take it out? Should I have to pay for the placement and removal? Is it impossible for me to get a dental implant? My other teeth are healthy, I didn’t really want to put crowns on them like I would need for a dental bridge.
Benjamin
Dear Benjamin,
There are some real problems with what your dentist has done here. When you have a dental procedure done, there needs to be a reasonable expectation that the procedure will succeed. The exception to this would be if you were doing an experimental procedure. That is not what you had done here. Instead, your dentist did a procedure he knew was going to fail. This feels like malpractice to me. Why would he do something that would require an additional surgery knowing it is a complete failure?
A second question I have here is why did he not know there was not enough bone structure before going into the surgery. Pre-procedural diagnostics are an essential part of the dental implant procedure. Had he done those diagnostics as he should have, then he would have known you did not have enough bone structure.
All of that tells me that you should have a refund on your dental implant procedure and NOT pay for the upcoming removal surgery. Start by just requesting that. Hopefully, he has the integrity to do the right thing. If he gives you trouble about it, let him know that you are going to go to the dental board and are willing to file a malpractice case. I’m fairly confident his insurance will tell him to refund you.
Can you still get a dental implant? Yes. You will need to have a bone grafting procedure done first in order to build up the needed structure to retain your dental implant. Once that is done and healed, you can go ahead and get your dental implant.
I’m going to suggest you go to someone with post-doctoral training in dental implants that has real expertise.
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