Dr. Petar Duchev, implantologist
I’ve worked as a dental implantologist for 10 years and my team at the clinic and I have developed our own philosophy which says that real dentistry isn’t simply a collection of services and that’s why:
• When a tooth (teeth) is missing I refuse to make “bridges” between healthy teeth. This leads to filing healthy dental tissue and in many cases to killing these teeth. In about 15 years the filed teeth will need to be extracted due to complications;
• I don’t put on movable prosthesis. They destroy the dignity of contemporary people. You don’t need to hide from your family in order to clean them;
• When teeth are missing, I suggest dental implants which can bring back the lost quality of life. This is the most reliable and predictable method.
• Teeth on implants aren’t removed, they look and function as natural ones and need the same care.
• Teeth on implants recover normal speech, there’s no articulation disorder with sounds, which is the case with prosthesis.
I’ve seen a lot of tears and I’ve heard a lot of sad-cautionary stories from my patients with movable prosthesis. For example: “I’m so worried that a family member will see my prosthesis, that’s why when I clean it I hide in the bathroom from everyone – from my husband, from the children, from the grandchildren”; “I just don’t know where to hide my false teeth so that my wife doesn’t find them“; “I haven’t kissed for about 5 years. I’m afraid my upper prosthesis might fall even if it’s “glued”. I don’t know what to do“.
Implants are titanium support in the jaw bones where false teeth- crowns or bridges are fixed immovably.
You can take a few days off, but most of our patients go to work on the very next day after the surgery. There’s no swelling or pain to worry about.
The risk of rejecting implants is very low – about 2-3%, and success – in 97-98% of the cases. Usually the lack of integration of the implants is a result of a mistake in the surgery proceedings or lack of the necessary care on the part of the patient after that. Professional care is compulsory.
There are more than 500 implant models in the world. Nearly as many as the car models. Among dental implants makers, as well as among car companies, there are three leaders, the rest belong to the “other” category. “Other” means not only less advertising expenses, but also fewer reliability, quality and guarantee tests.
Today a single surgery is enough to achieve the things that used to require several surgical interventions and the treatment sometimes took years. Now we can extract the sick teeth at once, put implants and to fix temporary crowns, which will give you the opportunity to look and live your life to the fullest.
The implantation surgery may take a few hours with a local anesthesia. However, it’s easier for us, as well as for the patient when we apply the “medical sleep” method – when the patient is asleep, they don’t care how long the surgery is. There’s no stress, blood pressure rise, and the team of anesthesiologists constantly monitor their vital signs. Thanks to the “medical sleep” we can now work with elderly patients as well. I’m proud of my eldest patient who is 94 and has been using her teeth on implants for two years already. No matter how.
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