I had a dental implant placed. A week or so ago, everything felt a bit loose. I called the dentist and he had me come in and he did an x-ray. He said the dental implant itself was fine and the problem was likely just that the dental crown was loose and needed to be recemented. I was relieved, to say the least. The real problem I ran into was when the dentist tried to rebond the crown. He tried to take it off, but the crown wasn’t budging. He got a special tool to help him, which did eventually get the dental crown off, but when it came off the dental implant came with it. I don’t know why this happened. Is is still possible to get a dental implant or is this a done deal and I need to look for something else?
Kaylie
Dear Kaylie,
I am sorry this has happened to you. I am having trouble understanding this level of gross incompetence. It should have been more than obvious it wasn’t your crown when he couldn’t get it off easily. A loose dental crown will come right off. His not recognizing that caused him to yank out your dental implant.
He should not have been able to yank that out easily if it were a secure dental implant. This tells me that the implant had failed. This does not mean that you cannot have another dental implant placed. I just would not recommend you do it with this dentist. There are several reasons for dental implant failure.
One could be that the dentist placed the crown well before the bone had time to properly integrate with the implant. Another possibility is that there was never enough bone there to support the implant to begin with. There is also the possibility of infection, but that is usually accompanied by a fever and some pain.
In your place, I would ask for a full refund. Then, if you still want a dental implant as your replacement, I would go to a dentist that had a significant amount of post-doctoral training in dental implants. This way you can be assured they know what they’re doing. One thing to note is that before you can have the dental implant procedure redone, you will need to have some bone grafting done in order to build back up the bone that is certainly gone now that you’ve lost the implant. Once that is healed up, you can start the implant procedure.
This blog is brought to you by Hilton Head Cosmetic Dentist Dr. Bonnie Rothwell.
