Patients

What is an implant?

An implant is an artificial tooth root made of titanium or ceramic, which is brought instead of a tooth into the bone.

Herefore will be drilled a hole in the bone, into which a suitable screw made of titanium or ceramic is screwed in. This screw becomes ingrown in the natural bone and is fixed thereby in the bone.

After an a healing time of 4 to 6 months the implants can be supplied with crown, bridge or a denture. The healing time is dependent of the existing bone structure, of the state of health of the patient (smoker and/or nonsmoker) and the kind of the denture.

The temporal corridor can last of 1 day after the implantation up to 6 months. These questions and the following approach must be discussed by the patient with the operating surgeon.

What do implants mean for us?

What are the cost of implants?

Why is there a difference?

The costs of the surgery are to be differentiated. It is to prove whether before the bone structure must be reconstructed (there must be present sufficient bones for implantation). In this correlation several operational interferences can be necessarily like for example the reconstruction of the bone with body-own bone or synthetic materials, with donor bones or with bones of animal origin. With the reconstruction of bone it can come to the fact that the cheek mucous membrane is attached directly at the jaw ridge. For long-term success it is important that implants are surrounded of embodied mucous membrane rooted on the bone. The surgical intervention is called vestibulum plastic or mucosa transplantation. It is quite possible that the patient in the first operation gets the mucosa membrane and the structure of bone is operated in a later session. Depending upon the material, there are temporal differences.

Between 3 and 6 months later the implants are inserted. So there could be necessary 3 operational interferences in total. For extreme cosmetic requirements in the frontal area can be necessary also up to 4 or 5 sessions. Depending upon condition results the difference between 1.600 Euro and 3.500 Euro and with difficult situations if necessary also more.

How can be the bone reconstructed?

Synthetic materials

The bone can be reconstructed with synthetic materials for example calcium phosphate. Advantage of these materials are for example the exclusion of the transmission of virus infections like Creuzfeldt-Jacob disease (CJD). Disadvantage is the increased absorption of the developed volume during the transformation, i.e. during the transformation in own bone material.

Animal bone materials 

Animal bone can be used from horse or cow. In this group it must be paid attention to the fact that the antigen structures are destroyed by a thermal process. Otherwise exists the danger of an antigen-antibody reaction, which rejects the bone material.

Human bone materials 

Human bone, which is won by body donors. Also in this group exists the transmission risk of prions. The transmission risk is surely larger than with bred animals, because humans took up animal products in the course of his life as food. The question arises here whether the risk is larger for the transmission of prions by intake of food than by the implantation of human bone. These questions each patient must answer itself and this depends on its individual food intake.

Resumee

In summary it can be said that the guideline for the processing of bone reconstruction materials on the legal part is so clearly defined that a disease transmission can be almost excluded. Outside of the Federal Republic of Germany here partially very simple national laws are valid, so that it will be advised against a transplantation (for example GUS states and third world countries). Self-bone is the safest kind of the transplantation. Here the bone is taken either out of the lower jaw, upper jaw or out of the own hip. The points of usage heal completely usually without any complication.