PRESERVE YOUR TEETH IN NEW YORK CITY
Dental Implant Clone Wars
If the ITI dental implant is the best, why doesn’t everyone use it?
Choosing an implant system for a dental office can be complicated. New clinicians—or dentists who are new to placing implants—are often bombarded with options at dental trade shows.
Companies constantly promote what they claim to be the latest and greatest innovations in dental implant design. There is also usually an attractive startup offer: Buy 20 or 30 implants and receive the surgical kit for free.
Of course, these companies hope dentists will become familiar with their system and continue purchasing their products.
Too Many Options, Few of Them Proven
There are more than 1,000 dental implant companies worldwide. Dozens of countries, including Korea and China, have implant-manufacturing capabilities. Many newer companies compete for market share primarily on one factor: price.
To market a dental implant in the United States, the FDA may only require a company to demonstrate that its product is equivalent to an already approved dental implant. Therefore, a long track record and extensive scientific documentation may not be necessary before a company begins marketing its implants to dentists.
Dental trade journals are filled with advertisements for low-cost or “clone” implants. These products may be similar in design to premium brands but are offered at a much lower price.
Unfortunately, these implants may lack the long-term clinical data needed to show that they are truly equivalent. A dentist who chooses lower-cost dental materials may be able to offer less expensive services. However, can they assure patients that they are receiving a well-documented, scientifically and clinically proven product?
Trusting Your Dental Implant
Most patients do not know which type of dental implant their dentist uses—and why should they? How could a patient determine the best implant system for replacing a tooth when even their dentist may be unsure which one to use?
Most dentists will not tell patients that they are using a “clone” or low-cost implant system, and most patients do not think to ask. Patients naturally assume that their dentist will use the best materials available instead of experimenting with a low-cost alternative.
At Preserve Your Teeth Dentistry, we use one type of implant: the Straumann Tissue Level implant.
This original design has been examined in more than 3,000 scientific publications. The Straumann system has 20 years of follow-up data, with documented evidence showing that 97 percent of its implants survive for at least 10 years.
Could a new or clone implant company make the same claim? Quite simply, it cannot.
Although there are approximately 1,000 implant companies worldwide, only one is ranked number one worldwide: Straumann.
If you plan on keeping your implant-supported tooth for at least 10 years—and who wouldn’t?—wouldn’t you want the most predictable implant available? Even if you could receive a cheaper implant, would it really be worth the risk?
By the way, if 97 percent of implants are successful, what happened to the other 3 percent?
That is a good question. Some dental implants do fail. In our next blog post, we will explain how an implant can fail and what can be done about it.
