work – Implants By Paresh

Mini Dental Implants ~ Are they bad? Do they work? Can you unscrew them with your fingers? Do the break? Can you use a mini implant on the upper arch? And many more……

I get lots of questions from Dentists and Patients alike on Mini Dental Implants. The short answer is if used and placed properly Mini Dental Implants will work to solve the patients request….to have a 2nd chance for teeth. A mini dental implant just does it a different way. Do I think mini implants will replace traditional regular conventional implants? No….mini dental implants offer the patient another choice. There will always be a need for regular implants.

Do Mini Dental Implants Work?

Yes…they can replace missing teeth in the upper and lower jaws with porcelain crowns or bridges. They can hold in upper or lower dentures with a o-ball and a snap fitted into the denture. Mini Dental Implants have a history of working well for over 15 years.

My Dentist tells me that I should not get Mini Dental Implants; what should I do?

There is lots of confusion on this subject of mini dental implants vs. regular traditional implants. There should not be. They both work and they both work well. It's more of an issue of choice for the patient. If a patient does not choose regular traditional implants they should not be told to just go home; they should have been offered mini dental implants. With 40 – 50 Million Americans without teeth, implant treatment should not be only for the rich. Mini Dental Implants offer what was once not possible for most patients. With only 3% of Americans with Dental Implants we as Dentists have so much work to do. It would take us our entire careers to help everyone live a better life with dental implants.

Mini Dental Implants do integrate (bond) to the bone.

They are approved to use in the USA by the FDA for long term use anywhere in the mouth.

I can tell you that my success after placing over 1500 mini implants is the same as regular conventional dental implants. I encourage patients who have reservations to make a consultation with a skilled Dentists (Oral Surgeon, Periodontists, or General Dentist) who places traditional implants and a Dentist who places mini dental implants. I would ask each one to see examples of their final results and how many implants they have placed. With that information I think patients are well equiped to make a choice that is appropriate for them.

Mini Dental Implants are so small, will they holdup in my mouth? I was told they would break.

Mini Dental Implants are made from titanium alloy. This alloy is 1.6 x stronger than CP(Commercially Pure) Titanium. Most mini dental implants are between 2.0mm and 3.0mm in size and fracture LESS because they are SOLID. A regular conventional implant is two pieces that is held together with a screw. If the traditional implant on average is 4.0mm wide and the screw hole in the center is 2.0mm wide then the outer wall of the implant is at most 1.0mm. Because of the one piece design the mini dental implant will fracture less than a regular traditional implant.

Do Mini Dental Implants integrate or bond to the bone? I was told they do not.

All the mini dental implants we use are made from the same Titanium alloy used in making the larger regular style traditional implant. The surface coatings are the exact same, so if titanium integrates (bonds) with the bone, the same will happen with a mini dental implant. Studies now show this to be true.

Paresh B Patel DDS Dentist Mooresville NC

Mini Dental Implants

Another good use for mini dental implants is when we have a failing bridge or a tooth that has had a failing root canal treatment. Our next case is a patient that came to see us after having pain with her temporary bridge. Her old bridge she told me was wobbling around and her dentist told her the post was weak and he needed to make the bridge longer…..only if we had met sooner that might not have been what she had chose to do. G8PBAUAAQB92

We can see on this x-ray (this is the x-ray she brought from her previous dentist before he removed the bridge and made it one tooth longer)the decay under the post that continues down the root on the tooth that has had the root canal treatment. The root canal tooth was very mobile (as in when I took the bridge off to assess the teeth I could move the root in the bone.

We covered all the options with the patient from a new bridge(her previous dentist has already made the decision to make a longer bridge for her that went to the canine tooth in front of the root canal tooth). I told her I thought it would not be a good idea to keep the root canal tooth since is was already mobile.

We talked about 2 traditional implants, or a few minis and single crowns on her natural teeth.

She decided to let me extract the Root canal tooth. There was enough destruction of bone on the cheek side that I explained to her that I would place some socket preservation material (a freezed dried mixture of bone) in the hole where the root was to help her body fill in that hole with good live bone so we could come back in 12 weeks and place a mini dental implant.

Here we have the socket preservation material in the extraction site. Its easy to see how plump the ridge looks. It will stay that way without caving in and will give us lots of good bone to put a mini dental implant.

2 Mini Dental Implants in place to hold a molar size crown. The mini dental implants will be shaped to allow room for her teeth to come together. We will place a Porcelain crown over the mini dental implants.

X-ray of the two mini dental implants in place.
The ghost image of where the root was will fill in with bone and in about 12 weeks we will add in another mini dental implant to support a crown.

I will continue the post with the pictures of the crowns when we get the final mini dental implant in place and the crowns back from the lab.

Paresh B Patel DDS mini dental implants

Dentist Mooresville NC

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Frequently Asked Questions on Mini Dental Implants ~ Do They Work?

Mini Dental Implants ~ Extractions ~ Immediate Placement and Saving the Bone

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