I need some advice. My dental implant felt weird, so I went in to see my dentist. He did an x-ray and assured me the implant itself was fine. His theory was the dental crown was loose, which he said it was a simple fix. When he started to remove the crown it seemed stuck, so he used a special tool. Instead of it taking the dental crown off, it took the crown and implant together! Have you heard of this happening before? My dentist thinks we can just put it back, but I’d like to know what went wrong first.
Logan
Dear Logan,
I can’t remember the last time I heard so much incompetence from a dentist. When a dental crown is loose, they can practically fall off. The moment it was “stuck”, which in this case meant securely bonded, he should have known the porcelain crown wasn’t the problem. Instead, he got a tool and yanked.
There are a few reasons a dental implant can fail. The first is lack of osseointegration. When an implant is placed, there is a period of healing. This serves a dual purpose. The first is to heal from the implant surgery. The second is to give the bone time to integrate with the dental implant as you see in the image above. When that doesn’t happen, the implant comes loose and eventually falls out.
Another reason an implant might come loose is because of an infection. Usually, this is accompanied by pain and fever, neither of which you mentioned. That leads me to believe it was the bone issue. This should have been obvious on the x-rays.
Getting Your Dental Implant Replaced
I do not want you to allow this dentist to replace your dental implant. He doesn’t seem to understand how they work. Instead, I want you to tell him to pay a dentist you choose to fix this. It’s not as simple as just replacing the dental implant. When he yanked the implant out, he took a considerable amount of bone with it. Not to mention, there is just the hole where the implant was removed.
What you will need first is to have bone grafting done. This will replace the missing bone you need for correct osseointegration to take place with your next dental implant.
This blog is brought to you by Baton Rouge Dentist Dr. Steven Collins.