Implantation – Surgical Placing of Implants

Description about the placing of implants. A comprehensive checkup is indispensable prior to any implantation. The diagnosis conducted by the oral surgeon decides about the placing of implants, necessary pretreatments, such as jaw bone restoration.

The Implantation

Until further treatments can be done, such as the insertion of crowns and bridges, the period of recovery after implantations, called osseointegration, takes about four to seven months. After that period, a medical examination clarifies whether fixed dental implants can be put in place.

Because of these requirements, comprehensive examinations, exact analyses of radiographs or data retrieved from computed tomography (3D X-ray imaging), and model analyses of plastic impressions of the jaw bone are preliminary parts of the planning phase before a root replacement procedure is allowed to start. Under certain conditions, particularly in cases where the jaw bone has already undergone a significant process of decay and degeneration, the doctor will have to augment the osseous structure, so as to ensure that implants would find enough substance to effectively adhere to. The osseous substance utilized here is usually taken from the patient’s hip bone via surgical operation.

In dentistry, augmentation is generally defined as the regeneration of lost osseous substance. But the term's applicability has also bee extended to the whole skeletal system. Today’s dentists have come to apply augmentations to a greater extent, as an increasing number of patients lacks the quality or quantity of bone substance indispensable for dental implants. For this purpose, dentists can resort to a great variety of techniques and methods in their effort to restore some part of the jaw bone.

Following the initial implantation, but only after four to seven months of healing and integration time, the gum is cut and set aside and the implanted screw or disk is laid open under local anesthesia. If required, corrections of the gum and the mucous membrane can be carried out in one go. If done so, it is time now to attach the actual prosthesis to the implant - be it a denture, a bridge, or a crown.