If you are at the point of having to have dental implants inserted, there’s a good chance your dentist cannot do this procedure for you. Even though dental implants have been around in the UK for more than 30 years and are no longer considered an experimental procedure, not every dentist can fit them.

But one who can is dentist Joe Bhat. Dr Bhat is a highly experienced oral surgeon, who has been fitting dental implants for almost as long as they have been around.

In fact, dentist Joe Bhat is so good at what he does that he is the go-to private referral dental implant surgeon for around 300 dentists across the UK.

Not every dental implant case is a simple one. Mouths have a way of acquiring complications as they get older, and often by the time people are ageing and in need of dental implants, getting them put in is not so easy.

The state of your jawbone

A common problem is the state of the jawbone, especially if the teeth have been missing for some time. When there is no tooth root in an area of jawbone, the bone cells take the lack of vibration from the root as a signal that they are no longer needed, and, instead of renewing themselves, the bone cells start to dissolve themselves so that they can release the bone nutrients back into the bloodstream for use elsewhere in the body. In a jawbone with no teeth at all, this can mean a loss of size and density of up to 25% in the first year alone with no teeth.

Dentist Joe Bhat has a way round such problems, with the use of bone grafts, or, if the dental implants are for the upper jaw, zygomatic implants. These are extra-long dental implants that go through the upper jawbone to be anchored into the dense cheekbone above. Bone grafts involve the insertion of bone material, either synthetic, animal, or from elsewhere in the patient’s body, into the area of the implant. If you have this done, you will probably have to wait a few months for it to take before you can have your implants fitted.