Implant innovation
Patients – and dentists – are realising that investing in implants has long-term benefits
for implants A growing case
D
id you know that out of the 30 million or so Americans who have missing
teeth, only about three million of them have implants? That’s right: one of the most aesthetically-driven nations in the world has just 1 per cent1 of the entire population (c300 million) who have taken up implant surgery. Regardless of why there
are not that many taking up this treatment, we should be focusing on the potential for growth. There is 99 per cent of the American population without implants. So what does that mean for the UK? And, more importantly, what does it mean for you? Often, American trends are
followed very closely by the British – just look at veneers.
So what this tells us is that there is a huge potential for growth and, believe it or not, even more so in these cash- strapped times. While most patients are rightly being very cautious about how they spend their money, they are now looking more closely at what is right for today and what will still be right in the next five years. So they are now more likely to invest in costly treatments if it is going to pay off in the long run. Glasgow dentist Duncan
Black said: “We used to get around one or two complex restoration cases a year, now we’ve got at least one to two new large cases every month.” While there is no exact data
of implants placed in the UK, we do know that tooth extrac- tion increased by 2.4 per cent2 last year in Scotland alone,
and with private dentistry now worth over £1 billion in the UK annually3 , we can see that implants will inevitably play an increasingly key role in the permanent replacement of lost teeth. Implants are an intimidating
and complex area, but the potential for growth here is so large and so imminent it cannot be ignored. Of course, you require proper training, qualification and practice, but implants are now an item which can be added to the offering of any practice, general or otherwise. DTS International is a Dental Laboratory which has special- ised in implants for more than 25 years and they can testify that this area has gone from strength to strength. But, while the quality has improved, the range of systems,
materials and abutments has continued to grow and grow as well, making it a busy market place and often deterring those who are new to implants from exploring this field. Technical director of DTS,
Sandy Littlejohn, said: “It’s an area of keen interest for us at DTS, but with all the systems and items on offer, I can imagine anyone stepping in to this world for the first time would be daunted by the material and system offering alone – well before they’ve even sat down with a patient. “While the choice and adapt-
ability is necessary, I can see how it would turn off a dentist who is just starting to offer implants. It’s actually the total opposite. It has never been easier or more straightforward
Scottish Dental magazine 39 Continued »
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