Just recently we’ve had an unusual number of patients coming in with serious problems with single front teeth. Perhaps it’s something in the Essex water!

Among the causes of these problems are
- sports injuries (eg getting kicked in the face playing rugby)
- ‘other’ injuries (eg falling down the stairs or sliding on the ice)
- old crowns that have failed and cracked the root
- problems with old crowns with posts
- problems with root filled teeth
in these cases extraction is often the only option.
In the past we would have had to wait months after extracting the tooth before putting the implant in, and then a few more months of waiting before the implant could have a tooth added to it…..6-9 months of waiting with a temporary bridge in place…
With Immediate Implant techniques we can often bypass this waiting time: if the bone is intact around the failing tooth and there is no infection present then we can (very) carefully extract the root (without damaging the socket walls) and put an implant directly into the tooth socket!
And if the implant is secure in the bone then we can even put the titanium post into place and put a temporary crown on top.
Where appropriate this treatment means that the patient can literally come to the clinic with a failed tooth and leave a short while later with their new implant tooth in place.









Thanks for the feedback Dr Galal.
We extract teeth and place immediate implants in about 30% of cases. We pick them very carefully but for those cases we do it works very well and almost certainly saves bone grafting following post-extraction collapse of the buccal plate. Obviously where no buccal plate is present things are much more complicated and we usually leave those and graft if necessary later on.
Molar immediate implants are attractive too – especially those upper molars where there is enough bone for implantation between the roots but after 3 months post extraction it would have all shrunk and -again- a graft (in the sinus) is necessary. I have done a few of these and they have worked well but it is certainly less straightforward and not something I would recommend routinely. If you look at the work of Dr Howard Gluckman from Cape Town he is doing this a lot and getting consistent results.
Hope this helps to get you started on immediates in the anterior – buzz me anytime if you have questions.
andrew