Quote:
Originally Posted by RickFLM4
Welp, a year and 1/2 since this settled down, the crown started to loosen and it became time to deal with this. Started the implant process today by removing the crown, getting out what was left of the old roots below that and doing the bone graft. 2+ hours in the chair (a lot of which was getting right level of local anesthesia and talking to my dentist, who has done hundreds of these procedures). Removing the remnants of the roots was difficult but it is done. I thought they were removed completely with the root canal (by another dentist long ago) but they weren’t.
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Well I finally finished with the first implant and the first step I quoted above was (by far) the worst of it. Specifically, I ended up with some pretty bad TMJ pain for close to a month last December and January, right through the holidays. I also managed to crack a tooth on the other side of my mouth, which resulted in an infection. My dentist referred me to an Endodontist for a scan to see if he could save the tooth with a root canal and he recommended we not even try and go straight to an extraction on that one. Fortunately that extraction went a lot better than the first one.
Once I got past the TMJ pain from the first extraction, the rest of the process wasn’t bad. The bone graft and overall recovery went well. Implant stability score of 78, which sounds like a C+ to me, but I’m told is very good. There are several steps but overall I’d say it’s not bad and I’m very happy with the result. Total OOP cost was about $4K as insurance maxes out at $1,500/year.
Now I am planning the do a second for the cracked tooth that got extracted. I'll probably get the implant this year so I can get the crown early next year when my deductible re-sets. Also want to wait a bit to make sure I’m still happy with the first one before proceeding to a second.