Surgical — 6 min read
Dental Implants
A titanium root replaced well lasts decades. Placed a few degrees wrong, it becomes a restorative problem that no crown can hide.
Screened and introduced free, usually within a few hours. Sunny Isles Beach, Florida and the surrounding corridor.
Indications
An implant is usually on the table when
An implant replaces the root of a single tooth so a crown can sit on it without touching the neighbours. It is the only replacement that stops the jawbone at that site from resorbing.
- You have lost a tooth and do not want the neighbouring teeth ground down for a bridge
- A tooth is cracked below the gum line and cannot be crowned
- A root canal has failed twice on the same tooth
- You wear a partial denture that moves, clicks or catches food
- A long-standing gap has started letting the opposing tooth drift downward
- Your existing bridge has decayed underneath one of its abutments
Good candidate if
- You have, or can build, enough bone at the site
- Your gums are healthy, or periodontal disease is being treated first
- You do not smoke, or will stop through the healing period
- Diabetes, if present, is reasonably controlled
No cost, no obligation, no lead list.
The detail
Where implant cases are won and lost
A titanium root replaced well lasts decades. Placed a few degrees wrong, it becomes a restorative problem that no crown can hide.
The visible part of the appointment — the placement itself — often takes under an hour. The result is decided before that, in the CBCT scan: how much bone is there, where the nerve and sinus run, and what angle lets the future crown emerge through the gum in the right place. Surgeons who plan digitally and place through a printed guide are working from that answer. Surgeons who place freehand are working from experience, which is sometimes enough and sometimes not.
The second decision point is timing. Bone needs three to six months to integrate with the implant surface before it can be loaded. Immediate placement into a fresh extraction socket is possible in good bone with an intact wall and saves months — but it is a judgement call, not a default, and the honest answer is sometimes to graft and wait.
The sequence
What actually happens, in order.
Timings vary between practices and cases. The order does not — and a plan that skips a step is worth asking about.
CBCT and digital plan
A 3D scan measures bone volume and maps the nerve and sinus. The crown is designed first; the implant position is reverse-engineered from it.
Grafting if needed
Where bone is thin, a graft or sinus lift rebuilds the site. This adds three to six months but prevents an implant placed at a compromised angle.
Placement
Usually 45-90 minutes under local anaesthetic, often through a printed surgical guide. Most patients work the next day.
Integration
Three to six months while bone fuses to the implant surface. A temporary tooth covers the gap throughout.
Crown
A scan, then a custom abutment and crown in zirconia or porcelain, torqued or cemented to the implant.
Getting the right hands
Who should be doing your dental implants.
This is the variable that decides your result, and it is the one you have least ability to assess from the outside.
Not years in dentistry. How many of these they do in a month, and what the difficult ones looked like.
Anyone can photograph a result on delivery day. We want to see it after it has been used.
CBCT, microscope, scanner, printer — whichever this case genuinely requires, on site rather than referred out.
For anything ceramic, the technician is half the result. A dentist who cannot name theirs is outsourcing blind.
Dental Implants FAQ
What people ask us about dental implants.
Including the cost question, answered with a real range rather than a request to call.
A single implant with abutment and crown generally lands between $3,500 and $6,000 in South Florida. Bone grafting adds roughly $400 to $3,000 depending on scale, and a sinus lift more. Be sceptical of headline prices under $1,500 — they almost always quote the fixture alone, with the abutment and crown billed separately later.
The placement is done under local anaesthetic and is usually reported as less uncomfortable than the extraction that preceded it. Expect two to four days of soreness managed with over-the-counter analgesics. Grafting and sinus procedures are more involved.
Ten-year survival in the literature sits around 95 to 97 percent. The implant itself rarely fails; the crown may need replacing at fifteen years or so, and peri-implantitis from poor hygiene is the main long-term threat.
Usually yes. Ridge augmentation, sinus lifts and, in severe cases, zygomatic implants make most mouths treatable. A second opinion from a surgeon who grafts routinely is worth getting before accepting a denture.
If the neighbouring teeth are untouched and healthy, an implant is nearly always the better long-term answer because it preserves them and the bone. A bridge makes more sense when those neighbours already need crowns.