I am going to need to have dental implants at some point, probably sooner than I’m prepared for. I had a partial denture, but it hurt so badly that I couldn’t wear it, and it made me sound like I had a mouth full of marbles, much like Karl Kassell on NPR, except it made a whistle whenever I said anything with an ‘s’ in it. Well, I speak on the air for a living, and it’s important that I be able to keep my ability to speak well.
Does anybody have any artificial teeth not attached to a denture plate? What’s involved in the process? How long does it take for your gums to heal after they remove the remnants of other, long-dead teeth before they can put in the implant? How expensive is it? I’d like to know as much as I can find out. Otherwise I’m going to die of septicemia one of these days because I waited too long.
I had the last 7 upper teeth pulled last summer. They immediately put in a temporary denture. After letting the swelling go down for about 3 months the dentist started telling me it was time for either a permanent denture or implants. I decided on the denture because of cost. I’d already paid for the denture and the implants were going to cost anywhere from $14,000 to over $30,000. Of course the dentist said he didn’t recommend the $14,000. Actually an oral surgeon has to put in the implants, then you wait for them to get set and then have another dentist put the teeth in. If it had been my lower teeth, I might have done it, but an upper denture isn’t all that bad.
Got one. The specialist charged me $3500. Pulled the tooth ($100), did gum work on the opposite molar (about $650), packed the cavity with bone growth type stuff. Waited 6 months, checked out ok. Waited about another month or two, drilled hole in new bone, inserted hollow titanium screw. Another month or two, came back, checked out ok. Went to regular dentist who cast the tooth and post, waited another three weeks for the crown. Installed abutment (post screws in to the hollow screw), mounted crown ($1000). My dental insurance paid ZERO for all of the above, except the tooth pull, gum work and 30% of the crown. (Basically implants are considered a new cosmetic procedure) They were more than willing to pay for a bridge, etc., which would have ran about $2000 total.
I got one several years ago and highly recommend it. It’s on one of my back molars, so it’s got to deal with a lot of pressure, and it hasn’t given me any trouble since about two days after the post was implanted.
I got really freaked out worring about it, especially while waiting the six months between the tooth-pulling and the post implantation, but when they did it, it turned out to be about the same amount of pain and bother as a regular filling. The part that hurt the most was the (dozen) novocaine shots beforehand, and that wasn’t even so bad. The procedure is long-ish – it took (IIRC) about an hour and 15 minutes. They gave me some big-time pain killers to use in the following several days, but I only needed them the afternoon of the next day.
(I’ve mostly been talking about the actual post implantation. After the post is put in, they leave a little nub sticking out above the gumline, and a few months later when the bone solidifies around the post, they take the nub off and screw the crown onto the post. That last part was no big deal.)
As BF detailed, dental insurance probably won’t cover it, but in my case, they did reimburse me for the cost of what they assumed a regular dental bridge would have cost (I think they gave me $600, whereas the real price was around $3600).
I have one in the lower back corner of my mouth. I got it 19 years ago when I was 15 and don’t remember an awful lot about the procedure or the healing time. I had some problems since then with the crown coming loose but that was fixed by replacing the crown. I now need to have the entire implant replaced but I can’t afford it so, like you, I’m probably going to die of some horrible infection.
This post probably wasn’t particularly helpful, sorry.