The one area where I would advise patients to be most wary about where they get their dental care is with dental implants. This is the number one area of litigation for dental malpractice claims.
The complication when there are dental implant mistakes is that when something goes wrong with a crown or a root canal treatment, the worst that could happen is that you lose a tooth. When something goes wrong with dental implants, you can lose a jawbone or part of a face. The complications become more serious.
And because this is such a “hot” area of dentistry, there are many dentists who are trying to help their patients by getting involved in this area of dentistry. The reason that is generating so many dental implant mistakes is that implant dentistry was not a part of the dental school curriculum of the vast majority of dentists in practice today. Only now are dental schools starting to incorporate adequate training in implantology. And as they try to do this, they are faced with a curriculum that is already jammed so full, they don’t know what to cut out so that they can adequately cover implantology.
Areas of Possible Dental Implant Mistakes
Here are the areas where you may experience problems:
Dental implants impinging on nerves in the lower jaw. There is a key nerve that runs through the middle of the lower jaw. When there are missing teeth and the bone begins to resorb, this nerve can end up being even closer to the surface than normal. The position of this nerve needs to be pinpointed in three dimensions, so it takes three-dimensional CT scans to be able to avoid it.
Dental implants placed where there is inadequate bone support. If there isn’t enough bone, you need to have bone grafts. In the attempt to economize, there may be a temptation to shortcut this.
Implant fixtures placed in sinuses or other nasal cavities in the upper jaw. Not only will this cause problems in the sinus or the nose, but there will also be inadequate bony support making them tend to come loose.
Using substandard fixtures. These fixtures need to be made to exacting standards of high-quality materials, or there can be problems with fit, longevity, or biocompatibility.
You can have medical conditions that affect the success of the dental implants. The dentist needs to be very thorough in discovering all relevant elements of your medical history.
There are other difficulties that are beyond the control of the dentist. You may just have a biotype that doesn’t respond well to dental implants.
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