The First Implant I got Paid to Place

After graduating dental school implants was something I knew I wanted to get into. My father at one point had placed implants back in the early 2000s, but had gotten away from it over the years. You surely have heard me by now when I say the reason for some of our fast growth since I graduated was our implementation of procedures we weren’t doing. Implants would be one of them.

I did my implant education at Alabama Implant Education in Birmingham, AL. It was a great course overviewing both didactic and hands on learning. Not soon after the course I walked into this patient in hygiene. Missing #30, adequate healthy bone, in a healthy young adult male.

In true millennial fashion I am fortunate because I never had to learn to place an implant without CBCT. We had purchased our machine just 3 months before this. Over the past year I have now placed over 100. You could say that’s pretty good ROI on that machine. I also couldn’t have placed that many confidently without it.

So on to the case. After obtaining profound anesthesia through a IA nerve block I made an incision and then drilled to 7mm with my 2.0 pilot drill. We use a aseptico motor and the biohorizons non guided drill kit. The one big thing I was taught at AIE is even if you know where your at its always good to take a PA of the guide pin. Here is a great example why because I was able to upright my angulation. After finishing out the sequence of drills a dummy implant was placed and PA taken. I don’t do this anymore, but I was dotting all my Is that day. Cover screw placed and stitched up. This was a 5.8x12mm Biohorizons tapered internal.

Now, if the implant torques above 40ncm I most likely am putting a healing abutment on to avoid another flap down the road. Here I covered it up. Came back 6 months later(patient was finishing up braces) uncovered and placed healing abutment. Upon completion of ortho a zimmer, tsv, scanpost was placed to be scanned by the cerec. Crown was milled in a emax LT A1 abutment block for a screw retained crown. I love using cerec to restore my implants because the turn around is very fast, often same day, and the savings are huge. Overall, I was very pleased with how this case turned out.