I have been off the board for a few days.

John,

Brian has certainly given you some very good information about wisdom teeth. I think he deserves an honorary dental degree with his responses about wisdom teeth, dentures and implants, etc.

Wisdom teeth can start to erupt at any age, however, the younger you are, the more likely it is that they will start erupting.

As far as your situation is concerned, without seeing the panorex, it is impossible to know whether your tooth would need to be extracted. Certainly, if the surgeon determines that the potential for future problems with leaving the tooth in, out way the risks of removing the tooth, you should get it out.

Good luck with your consult this week and let me know what the doc says.

Hi Amy,

As with any sevice performed, the charge for the service has to take many factors into consideration. As Brian mentioned, the cost of the implants themselves, are very high. When you take into account the fact that the bone drills are one time use items, overhead,additional supplies, sterilization costs, education costs, etc. the surgical phase of placing an implant runs quite high.

Making a crown for an implant is much higher than for a regular crown due to the precision parts that are used by the laboratory. My lab costs for an implant crown can run up to 3-5 times the cost of a crown on a tooth.

This past year I have started to fabricate all porcelain crowns in my office in one visit using the CEREC cad-cam system. This has halped me to cut down the cost of crowns for my patients as I can eliminate my lab bills. I just did my first one on an implant last week and it saved the patient over $300 dollars. However, bear in mind that the system cost me $98,000. That will take a long time to recoup.

Jerry
I hope this will help everyone appreciate why implant dentistry is so costly. However, if you can afford it, the results are far superior to dentures or bridges.