Dental implant vs. Bridge

[RPM33]

Originally Posted by RickFLM4

Anyone have a dental implant or bridge (one tooth)? If so, are you happy or would have have made a different decision than the one you made? I can do either (or just have one less tooth) and leaning towards dental implant over bridge.

I got two implants one year ago. They are expensive ($7,500 for both out of pocket with insurance). It is worth it as they look and feel like real teeth.

The $7,500 includes for me the removal of the two rotten teeth, two implants, and two customized made crowns to match your existing teeth. Hopefully you have better dental insurance than me.

[RickFLM4]

Originally Posted by RPM33

I got two implants one year ago. They are expensive ($7,500 for both out of pocket with insurance). It is worth it as they look and feel like real teeth.

The $7,500 includes for me the removal of the two rotten teeth, two implants, and two customized made crowns to match your existing teeth. Hopefully you have better dental insurance than me.

Our insurance is just starting to cover implants in 2024 (coincidentally- decided to do this before I knew they were adding it). But OOP max is much less than cost of implant and crown so I expect to be OOP around $5K or so. Is what it is.

[RickFLM4]

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.

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.