In this excerpt from the Remedico Podcast, Dr. Costa Nicolopoulos and Dr. Petros Yuvanoglu, founders of SameDay Dental Clinic in Dubai, explain what makes the SameDay team stand out in dental implant placement. They discuss the surgical skill required for same-day extractions, implants and teeth, the role of implant stability, and why precise implant placement allows teeth to be loaded on the same day.
Q: What makes the SameDay team different from others?
Dr. Costa Nicolopoulos: I think it all boils down to the surgical skill and expertise that you may have in order to do this treatment. I don't believe I'm the only one, but I don't think everybody has the appropriate and necessary surgical skill set to do same-day extractions, implants and teeth.
Q: Why don’t most dentists place teeth on implants immediately?
Dr. Petros Yuvanoglu: Usually when you are placing an implant inside the bone, that implant is not one with the bone immediately. It needs about two months for the implant to become one with the bone, and this process is called osseointegration.
For osseointegration to happen, the implant must stay completely still. If it moves more than 150 microns, it will never osseointegrate.
That is why most dentists place the implants and then wait for about two months before attaching teeth. They are concerned that if the patient bites onto the implant too early, it may move and fail to integrate.
Q: So how can teeth be placed on the same day?
Dr. Petros Yuvanoglu: What we do is called immediate loading. We load the implants immediately with teeth.
There is a lot of scientific research showing that if an implant is placed with very high torque and stability at the time of placement, it becomes difficult for it to move. Because of this stability, it can be loaded immediately with teeth.
This is what Dr. Costa does. He specializes in placing implants with very high torque inside the bone.
Q: How do you achieve that stability?
Dr. Costa Nicolopoulos: I place the implants with good stability. Can other people place them with good stability? Some can. But the idea is to prepare the hole in the bone in a very precise manner so that when you place the implant, there is maximum bone-to-implant contact.
This intimate adaptation of the bone to the implant causes the implant to be fixated very nicely and not move.
