Implants put a smile on my face
TWO YEARS ago, I began renovations on the left side of my mouth, to restore it to full chewing capacity and cosmetic glory. When I finally found the funds to restore the right side, it proved a totally different experience.
Back then, I journeyed 50 miles from my home to an expensive dental implant centre in Hove, where there seems to be a huge concentration of such clinics.
This time, I waited to see my specialist in the company of families, a fair few of them Charedi, in the much more informal setting of a busy north London general dental practice, which was seeing NHS as well as private patients.
Which is not to say my new implant was priced much lower than the previous two, although prices are finally coming down as more of us come around to the fact that implants are the only really satisfactory solution to replacing missing teeth.
Uzman Ul-Haq, the dental surgeon who performed my latest implant, is a Fellow of the International Congress of Implantologists, which requires members to have had formal specialist education in placing implants.
He swathed me in surgical drapes, before commencing the intense experience of placing the screw to hold the crown, the vitally precise operation on which the entire success of the implant experience depends.
Dr Uz — pronounced Ooze — is one of a new band of roaming implantologists. When not at the Together practice where he saw me, in its Whitechapel and Tottenham branches, he moves between Burnham-on-Crouch, Luton, Gerrards Cross, Marlow, Oxford, Bedford, Solihull, Crewe and Yateley.
He has had his spell in Harley Street, too, and believes more practices will start offering the services of a qualified implantologist rather than referring them to an outside practice “because they like to keep an eye on their patients and only refer out the most difficult cases”.
Implants are finally becoming a frontline treatment in the UK, as they already are in Israel, whose dental approach
Uz knows well and admires.
“There, implants are considered part of an overall plan for the patient,” he says, “whereas in the UK they are still thought of as the last option once all other options fail.”
And implants are more affordable in Israel, he adds, because: “It has its own manufacturing industry, whereas all implants and other components used in the UK have to be imported.”
Once my mouth had been skilfully numbed — I didn’t feel the injection into my gum and certainly not the drilling deep which followed — the implant which holds the crown was placed and left to heal for the six weeks usually needed while the gum grows around it.
Soft food for a couple of days and careful brushing around the area with a soft toothbrush, plus thrice-daily salt water rinses for a week, were prescribed to fight off possible infection.
Then it was back to get impressions made. While Uz, like my former Hove implant practitioner, has access to a digital scanner, both specialists made use of the traditional putty method for greater accuracy.
Creating the crown which screws into the implant is as much an art as a science — it’s not only a question of matching shape and shade of existing teeth, but ensuring contact with opposing teeth to restore the chewing function lost when a tooth is removed.
I have previously had two adjacent teeth extracted — and placement of a second implant in a gap far back in my mouth would have been too difficult because of drilling logistics.
So Uz opted for a single crown, larger than it would otherwise have been, guaranteed to make four points of contact with the opposing teeth in my upper jaw.
This precious piece of porcelain, which has restored my gap-free smile, was made by a Korean artisan entrusted by Uz to make all his implants, and is indistinguishable from its neighbours in both appearance and function.
More than £2,000 for a tooth — about £2,400 is the going rate in the UK — is a hefty investment, but made easier with 12 months’ interest-free finance, offered by Together.
Uz finished off my treatment with an unexpected gift from Israel. It was a tiny plug containing silver, which he placed into the screw securing my implant to fight any bacteria which might arise. Used routinely in America as well as Israel, it’s available in the UK only as part of a trial, so this time round I was the beneficiary of Israeli technology as well as British professional
expertise.
A surprise gift from Israel, a plug with silver to fight any bacteria’