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Steinberg Dental Team 2023

Dental Implants Fell Out

Posted by writeradmin

Question submitted by: Ruthie

I am a bit frustrated and worried. I have had dentures for a couple of years and really never liked them. I decided to get some dental implants to support them. I was getting eight dental implants in total. I did the bottom ones first. It hasn’t even been a week, and half the bottom ones fell out. I have a few questions. 1. Should I be worried about the other dental implants? 2. Should I have to pay for the ones that fell out? 3. Can I still get dental implants or give up?

Ruthie

Dear Ruthie,

Illustration of a dental implant

 

I am sorry that this happened to you. I am curious as to what type of diagnostics your dentist did, but we’ll get into that in a moment. Let’s start with your questions in order.

First, should you be worried about the remaining dental implants? Absolutely. When dental implants fail, it is almost always after they had some stress pressed on them. It sounds like yours failed without anything placed on it, this is even more concerning. I would not move forward with anything else until you had someone with some dental implant expertise to look at these and tell you why they failed.

Here are some common reasons that dental implants fail:

  • Development of  an infection. This is most often because of a poorly fitting fixture. I would have thought there would be some pain and/or a fever.
  • Diagnostic shortcuts. This is one of the things I was most curious about with your case. You said you’d already had dentures for a couple of years. Did your dentist do many xrays to check your bone density? What about a CT scan to get 3-dimentional results? Given that your implants fell out without any real stress on them, I wonder if you had enough bone support.
  • The use of substandard implant fixtures. Some dentists will save money by buy implant fixtures from overseas manufacturers. These are not always built to the same standard as those in the United States.
  • Incorrect placement of the implant. This can be dental error or if you allowed the oral surgeon to determine the placement of the implants instead of the dentist. Even if an oral surgeon is placing your implants, the dentist should be the one to determine the placement.
  • Premature loading. This is if your dentist places the crowns or dentures on the implants before the bone has had time to integrate with the implants.

As to your second question, should you have to pay for the failed implants? No, you should not have to pay for them. I would ask for my money back immediately. That would be like having to pay for a brand new refrigerator that does not actually keep food cold.

Third, should you give up on getting dental implants? I don’t think so. However, I do think you’re going to need a different dentist to do them. Your dentist has a 50% failure rate (thus far), which is much larger than the national rate. Even when implants do fail, they usually do it over a year later, not within the first week.

Find a skilled implant dentist and have them look at your situation and give a recommendation as to why they’d failed.

This blog is brought to you by Tucson Dentist Dr. Howard Steinberg.