Dental Implant costs start from £2200.
Dental implants are small titanium metal screws which are surgically placed in the jaw bone.
Once the implant has integrated into the bone, it can then be used like a natural tooth root to support either a fixed crown or fixed bridge (as above) or used to stabilise a removable overdenture very securely.
Worth the price?
This treatment has revolutionised the treatment of missing teeth and avoids the need to drill into adjacent natural teeth as is the case for conventional dental bridges.
Implants may also help prevent the bone of the jaws from shrinking away after tooth loss. Implants are now considered highly successful and long-lasting if carried out with the proper care and expertise.
How do they work?
In many patients there just isn’t enough bone remaining to allow the simple placement of dental implants.
In mild to moderate cases the bone may be built up at the same time as implant placement using an artificial bone substitute and a membrane (from animal sources), as well as some local bone chips from the patient.
Where the bone loss is more severe, a block of bone may be taken from another part of the patient’s jaw (or even the hip in extreme cases) in order to build up the bone prior to implant placement some months later (this is called a block Onlay graft). Although this is a more invasive, time-consuming and more complex process, the specialist can achieve excellent results with careful planning and expert treatment.
