RickFLM4 wrote

Anyone have a dental implant or bridge (one tooth)? If so, are you happy or would have have made a different decision than the one you made? I can do either (or just have one less tooth) and leaning towards dental implant over bridge.

RPM33 wrote

I got two implants one year ago. They are expensive ($7,500 for both out of pocket with insurance). It is worth it as they look and feel like real teeth.

The $7,500 includes for me the removal of the two rotten teeth, two implants, and two customized made crowns to match your existing teeth. Hopefully you have better dental insurance than me.

RickFLM4 wrote

Welp, a year and 1/2 since this settled down, the crown started to loosen and it became time to deal with this. Started the implant process today by removing the crown, getting out what was left of the old roots below that and doing the bone graft. 2+ hours in the chair (a lot of which was getting right level of local anesthesia and talking to my dentist, who has done hundreds of these procedures). Removing the remnants of the roots was difficult but it is done. I thought they were removed completely with the root canal (by another dentist long ago) but they weren’t.

iX nOOky wrote

I am getting an implant May 29th. Maybe. I had my upper front tooth slowly die from resorption, and it was removed in December last year. At the time my dentist didn't want to talk about bone grafts until it healed because he wasn't sure how it would look after healing.

Now I wish I had pushed for an implant back then, because when they go to do the procedure in May I may end up with different outcomes. One is he does a bone graft at that time because there may not be enough bone. Two is that he does the implant and is able to pack some bone graft material at the same time. The last is that there is enough bone and the implant proceeds normally. I was told he wouldn't be able to tell until he got into it, which is kind of a bummer.

It will be expensive, but hopefully worth it. I'll pay for it out of pocket, but keep the receipts in case I want to draw out of my HSA later on. It appears to be a long process of healing between steps.

Roadcrew wrote

... The left eye tooth was slowly wiggling it's way out. Finally had it pulled. Dr want to do another implant and since the first one was great I thought why not. Needed a bone graft first. The process took 6 months. Then had the implant installed. New implant healed nicely. About 2½ years later started to fail. Dr made valiant effort to save it to no avail...appearance but really at 73 who cares.

DocL wrote

As a dentist, a upper front tooth is a different situation in regards to a posterior tooth. The issue being the width of the alveolar ridge, and where the gingival crest is in relation to the adjacent teeth. When the surgeon I refer anterior teeth for extraction, we always place a bone graft. Depending on the quality of bone we can sometimes immediately load the implant and guide the tissue with a provisional abutment and crown. I usually allow six months for the tissue to conform before I fabricate the final crown.

I hope you are having a Periodontist place the implant. It's not the placement that is difficult, well sometimes it is, it's managing the tissue and emergence profile that is challenging with implants. I've seen some really bad disasters with front teeth that make Mr. Ed's teeth look like a Miss. America smile lol.