Health & Wellness Best Posts in Thread: Dental Implants

@jim787 You mentioned that Dr. Chua (he's the guy at Holy Child?) charges a lot compared to your dentist. If the girls teeth are a complete disaster there may be a lot more work than an ordinary filling at Php 800.
I went to see him for a consultation. My dentist who will remain nameless so I don't get sued or shot pushed a dental implant up between my pallet and the sinus membrane. His idea was to pull the skin off the roof of my mouth, cut a hole through the pallet and go find the wayward implant. None of that seemed like a good idea to me so I went to see Dr. Chua. I ask him to remove the implant. He said No way. He told me to go to an implant specialist at a hospital in Cebu. When I told him my dentist wanted to perform the procedure in the chair in his office Dr. Chua turned an ashen colour. It seems that procedure needs to be performed in a sterile surgery.
My point being sometimes dental work can be more complicated than appears.

Today I finally got my dental implant procedure completed by Dr. Cordeta and am as pleased as punch. Her price was higher than the "implant specialist" in Cebu. I rejected the guy in Cebu's treatment plan because it was seriously flawed.

I'll write an explanation tomorrow complete with pictures with what I had done and more importantly WHY the treatment cost a bit more.

 

I don't remember exactly how much I spent in total but it was close to 550 K pesos.
Dr. C. gave me an itemized cost estimate with a price for each procedure.
The price would have been lower but for having to remove the failed implants and having to scrape a pile of rotting tissue from my jaw bone. The bone grafting was not cheap but it was necessary.
I think a straight forward job with 4 implants and 10 teeth is around 400K.

All in all I felt the work done was well worth the price a lot cheaper than if I had used the guy in Cebu.

 

The Cebu Dr. had some plans that would "save me money". His "good idea" was to try and save the existing implants by doing bone grafts to fill in the missing bone. When I asked why the bone was missing he had no idea. The bone was missing because it had become infected.

Now that my rant is behind me I'll talk about what went right.

There was no anesthesiologist willing to do general anesthesia or sedation outside a hospital. Dr. C. referred me to someone that prescribed Zanax, that worked just fine.

A Sunday afternoon was booked and the work began.

The entire gum was cut open to expose the jaw bone. A lot of diseased bone was carved out and the sockets were filled with bone graft material.
Next the holes for the implants were drilled. There was a specialized drill bit for making the correct sized hole. It was interesting Dr. C. would drill for a few centimeters, stick in a piece of metal, take an x-ray and decide how much deeper the hole could be. When the maximum depth was reached she selected an implant added some fluid to the hole that promotes bone growth and screwed it in. Dr #1 never checked the hole depth but he did puncture my sinus cavity 3 times.
Sew up the gums and go home. The entire procedure took about 4 hours. I spent 4 hours in the chair with Dr. #1 to get one implant installed so 4 hours for all that work was pretty good.

After a couple of week Dr. C. called me in for an exam. She took a mold of my mouth, two days later she had a set of conventional dentures for me to wear. That surprised me as I didn't expect anything.

When the new teeth arrived for installation I was really surprised. The technology used to make the new teeth fit the implants was impressive.
#1 was a cast of my mouth with the implants as installed.
#2 was a jig/template used to trim the abutments so they would be parallel. This is important so the adhesive holding the teeth to the abutments is minimal.
#3 a nice looking set of teeth.

Below are some pictures that are pretty much self explanatory.
Implants in my upper jaw.

Cast of my pallet with the implants as installed in my mouth.


The jig for making the abutments parallel.



The jig sitting on the mold. Occasionally the jig would be put in my mouth to see what needed to be trimmed from the abutments.



The new teeth to be installed.


The new teeth installed.


It took 2 or 3 weeks for the new teeth to arrive from Manila. They are definitley not like the cheap stuff Dr #1 supplied.

I looked at some of the paperwork and diplomas on Dr. Cordeta's wall. She graduated from UP and passed her board exam as #7 in the country. I'm not at all surprised. She know her stuff.

She put me on antibiotics and gave me a strict list of Do's and Do not's.


Happy, Happy, Happy....

I'm not going to name the butcher that gave me all the grief however if I ever hear his name recommended I'll send a PM

 

Hi Show Pony,

Try Premier Dental Care Solutions opposite Do Bosco school see

https://www.facebook.com/premierdcs/

Globe 09171745005
Smart 09989575397
Landline 4210579

She is always very busy so you may have to wait - and has had good ratings here previously which I think helped make her busy but through the FB message system you can ask the question of Dr Cordeta - she does use general anaesthetic for other procedures such as impacted wisdom teeth so suspect she does for dental implants also, call and enquire.

P

 

At this point I time I have some experience with dental implants. In another post I will detail what went right. When I arrived in Dumaguete (2009) I met a denstist who did implants...WOW. I was told for a mere 720K pesos I could have a full set of upper teeth (12 implants) and be chewing sugar cane in only two weeks. I paid in full right away. Foolish me. Live and learn.

For now I'm going a a BIT OF A RANT with my first experience in Dumaguete (the caps lock was no accident).

Here is a picture of the shrapnel left over from a 720K peso rip-off.


The first step is to drill a hole into the jaw bone and install the implant. After about 6 months the bone will bond with implant. The hole in the jaw must fit very closely to the implant. Gum material grows back quickly and bone grow slowly. You don't want the gum tissue to grow down along the implant. That allows bacteria and plaque inside the bone which can lead to infection.
On most of the implants you will notice some brown tinge/stuff. That is infected bone material. How cou that happen you may ask....well the dentist used an ordinary drill bit (burr) to make the holes. The hole were sort of round, almost the correct shape and the depth was near enough (sarcasm). A couple of times I had to return the next day because the implant fell out, he just sewed the gum over top to keep the implant in place.
The second step is to install the abutments onto the implants with a small bolt. The small bolt needs to be torqued to a specific tension. Dentist 1 only tightened the bolts finger tight. On several occasions he had to drill through the ceramic teeth to re-tighten the bolt. A mold is taken of the roof of the mouth and the abutments so a set of teeth can be made.
The final step is to glue the fake teeth onto the abutments.

In the photo I want to point out the cobalt/chrome substrate the supports the enamel. The cobalt/chrome piece provides strength to the teeth and you will note it is very thin and actually broke when the implants were removed. The teeth were made by a local lab.
Adhesive is put into the holes of the abutments to hold the teeth in place. The holes are huge because the implants are not parallel. The less adhesive the better. Some of the holes had no adhesive in them. There are two possible reasons either the adhesive was super cheap and saliva soluble OR he forgot to put in the adhesive.

Everything is done....hahaha...except for the warranty part, I need more money demand, the denial segment, blame the customer (foreigners are stupid), no refund for uninstalled implants (I already spent the money) and the look at all my diplomas I'm a Dr and you're not.

Warranty: they failed because you were chewing something hard.
I need more money....yeah 500K pesos because the bone got infected.
Denial? What denial...you moved your head so the implant got installed a a very bad angle.
No refund on unused parts I paid for 12 implants he only installed 8 because ....you won't follow my medical advise to spend an extra 500K to fix stuff I screwed up.
END OF RANT....

Side Note: it took 18 months to complete a procedure that was supposed to take 2 weeks.

 

Try Dr. Jane Palma, Portal West Bldg, top floor. 09175330066. My family has used her for 6 years. A friend had a root canal there. She takes emergencies, closed Sat-Sun. Tell who answers the phone Pat and Kennedy gave you her name.

 

Wow, Show Pony, that is a very sad and disturbing story. Sorry you had to go through that. Are you going to let us know the name of the office that did that to you? I look forward to your post about what went right, I hope that eventually everything has worked out for you.

 

It seems highly likely that if an anaesthesiologist is sedating you then it will sufficient to give you the bliss you desire.

Best of luck for your treatment and let us all know how you get on.

 

another dental clinic in Cebu, looks like a standard noone reaches here in Duma
https://affinitydentalclinics.com/#