Ask a Dental Implant Provider

Hi, everyone. This is Dr. Sasan Khodabakhsh. I'm a general dentist here in Mckinney, Texas, and today I want to share with you some of the deep insights I have as a dental professional. I'll be sharing with you the top five questions you should ask your dental provider before committing to surgery. This will help determine the credibility of your provider on a deep level, in a short period of time. Let's begin. All right. You're back. Let's dive in. Question number one, what is your dental provider's formal education in dental implantology? Who were they trained by? What was their formal training like? How long did it take to get the training? How many dental implants have they placed? These are all really important questions you should ask your dental provider. For example, I've taken multiple CE courses, taken hundreds of hours of CE credits, and also taken rigorous exams studying the best techniques available to placing dental implants, dealing with complications, and providing the best care for my patients. And if your dentist doesn't have formal extensive training in implants, then you should ask maybe for a warranty on the implant procedure that they're about to do. Question number two, does your dental provider have a 3D CT scan? This is one of the common problems I often see and hear about patients getting implants placed without the dentist having a good 3D scan taken of the patient ahead of time. Now, most dental offices have what we call a 2D x-ray. They give us information of basically where the teeth are, how much teeth are there, an idea of how much bone is available, but there's still a margin of error with those x-rays ahead of time if you want to place an implant. What we do here on every single patient that comes to our office when we want to do an implant procedure, we take a 3D x-ray on a daily basis. The information we gather gives us a lot of information ahead of time. So we can avoid errors that can possibly occur with a regular x-ray. For instance, we can know exactly how much bone is available, we know where the nerves are, where major anatomical landmarks are. It allows us to plan the surgery ahead of time so we have a great and higher success rate when we place dental implants. And these are all important questions you should ask your dental provider. Question number three, will the dental implant and crown be done in the same office? Now, this is a common occurrence in a lot of general dental offices, is that the implant is placed by one provider, and then the patient has to go to another provider to have the dental crown done. Now, this is fine in cases where the doctors communicate well as far as what the expectations are for the end result, which is usually a crown. And when sometimes a patient goes to a provider and there's no communication with the provider who's going to be restoring it, that implant can be placed in a non-ideal location. What I mean by that is that sometimes there have been cases where I've had to restore a case on a patient where the implant was not in a place that I would have placed it in for whatever reason, maybe there was not enough bone, or maybe the dentist didn't take a 3D x-ray, and we get a non-ideal result. So that's not really the best option for the patient. So ask your provider, will everything be done under one roof or will they have to go to another office or to another provider and get the procedure done? Question number four, how will your dental provider take your medical condition into account? Now, typically, in our office, we always do a thorough medical history and ask a lot of questions about your background, what medications you're taking, if you have any types of medical conditions. So, for example, if you have diabetes, we often ask you to have blood work done by your physician. We want to see if you're going to be a good candidate for long-term results when you have a dental implant procedure done. Question number five, how accessible is your surgeon after the procedure? This is really important. When you have a dental implant procedure done, it is a surgery and you want to make sure that that dentist that placed the implant is going to be available for you in case there is a small chance that you may have a complication. For example, when you have an implant placed, oftentimes you have sutures placed, and let's say, after a few days that suture comes out. Will you be able to call your office and get seen by that doctor right away? Because you may feel that that implant may come out or you may get an infection. So, for peace of mind, you want to make sure that that dentist is available for you. In our office, usually our patients are seen the same day when there's a dental emergency. Most of my patients have my cell number, and I'm in good communication with them about their post-op instructions as far as what to do, what medications to take. And we follow with them on a regular basis, even though there may or may not be a complication. Now, I also wanted to mention something as a side note. I've had patients come to me in my office and have told me that they've had dental implants done in other countries, such as Mexico, or I've heard India and other places in the world. Now, the problem with that is if you have an implant placed in another country and you live here in America and you come back and you have a complication, you're going to have a problem. That doctor that placed the implant or did the procedure on you is not going to be within one day, usually travel time and it's not feasible in most cases. That's why I always recommend to make sure you have the surgery done in an area where you can go and see the dentist if you have a problem. Oftentimes, an implant that's placed in another country, the dentists here in America, we may not have the parts and pieces in order either to remove it or to fix the problem that you may be having. So that's a common problem that we often see and it can be avoided. Those are the five common questions you should ask before committing to surgery. I hope this gives you some insight on the variables you should consider before you have a dental implant placed. If you found this valuable, go ahead and give us a thumbs up and please share this with your family and friends. This is Dr. Sasan Khodabakhsh with Summit Point Dental Implant Center. Thank you for watching.