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Implant Placed With Poor bone Density

I need some advice about how to proceed. I went to a dentist about getting a dental implant. My dentist does not do them, so I looked for someone who advertised. We did a consultation, he took some x-rays, and said everything was fine. The day of the surgery, though, he told me when he went in he realized there wasn’t enough bone support. He put the implant in anyway. Now he wants to remove it and place a dental bridge. This cost me $3K. Should I be entitled to a refund? Am I stuck getting a dental bridge? I sort of had my heart set on an implant.

Ginny

Dear Ginny,

Dental implant diagram

I’m not sure how your dentist thinks he can get away with this. Of course you are entitled to a refund. When a dentist tells you he is providing you with a dental implant, there is a reasonable expectation that the implant will actually be able to support the implant crown. Yours will not, therefore as an implant it is absolutely useless. Your dentist should refund your money in full.

There is a bigger issue here too– Your dentist’s competency and integrity. First, if he had done adequate diagnostics, he would have known there was not enough bone support. This means he either was incompetent in reading the x-rays or he didn’t do the correct ones. Both of these mean he’s incompetent.

The other issue here is the fact that he placed the implants knowing there was not enough bone support. That is malpractice. If you decided to be nasty about it, you can get additional money. At a minimum, I think you should tell him that you want him to pay to get this done correctly. Don’t just let him give you a refund. While you can still get a dental implant and should not be relegated to a dental bridge, you will need an additional procedure.

Without the correct bone support, your implants will fail. There is a bone grafting procedure which can be done to build that back up. Once that is complete, you will be good to go for implants.

Best of luck!

This blog is brought to you by Lafayette, LA Dentists Drs. Foreman and Thimmesch.