Last week I was doing an interview on WLOS’s Spotlight Carolina, discussing our new dental technology and just how far dental implants have come. We were talking about the computer guided programs now available for dental implants and the 3D cone beam x-ray that makes placing dental implants simple, safe and quick. One of the questions I was asked during the interview, was how long would it take, if someone broke or lost a tooth due to an accident? Meaning how long, with our new technology, would it take to actually replace the tooth and have the patient’s tooth completely restored?
While I answered the question, and we had a great discussion, it was ironic because first thing Monday morning I walked into the office and a woman had called with an emergency, and that is exactly what happened. She was not our patient, but she had seen me interviewed on WLOS, and over the weekend she had broken her tooth.
She broke it simply eating a piece of hard bread, and while chewing her tooth just fell apart. We told we could definitely help her and to come on in immediately. We asked that she work with us on scheduling, as we were working her in, and we did have other patients on the schedule who took priority, but I promised her in a few short hours she would walk out of our office with a restored smile.
Now just like all of us, this woman was busy, and she did not have time for this dental emergency. She was in the process of moving to Asheville, was still closing on her house, selling her other house, and planning a vacation. Again, the last thing she had time for was a broken tooth, and just to make things more stressful for her the broken tooth was right in the front of her mouth. The first thing people see when they looked at her.
Luckily, due to this amazing new dental implant technology we were able to design and place her implant that morning, and place a temporary crown so she walked out the front door, in a few short hours, with her beautiful smile restored. In a traditional setting, this dental implant process could take up to six months, and on the first visit the patient would leave without either a gap in their mouth or having to where a removable partial (dental “flipper”). As many patient’s know, dental partial’s can be aggravating to deal with because patient’s have to remove them and clean them every single time they eat, and at night patient’s are required to remove the partial, and place it in a jar while they sleep. Meaning, you may have to allow your spouse or family members to see you with a gap in your mouth.
So not only did our “new” patient leave with a beautiful new smile, and the peace of mind knowing she only has one more visit in our office. Just one more visit to check the implant and get her permanent crown placed (which we will do with a CEREC in just an hour.) Again, in a traditional setting this dental implant procedure could take six months or more, and require at least six visits. With our new dental implant technology we were able to restore her smile in one visit, and we were able to limit the entire dental implant procedure to just two visits.
What we can do with today’s dental implant technology is simply amazing!
