This Christmas, I'm writing a short series of blogs about getting started in implant dentistry, and this is for various reasons.
The main reason is that there are not enough people doing implant dentistry to service the population that wants to have it and the population that will continue to want it and get larger as we move forward.
There is no question that the demand for implant dentistry in the United Kingdom is growing and getting bigger.
Part of this is because the penetration of implant treatments in the United Kingdom is still one of the lowest in Western Europe, way smaller than that of France, Italy and Germany, and the implant companies are putting a lot of effort and energy into increasing the awareness of dental implants for the public.
The second thing that is happening is that we are moving towards a world of private dentistry in the United Kingdom much more quickly than we were pre-pandemic, and in this world, people are offered more options more often, and implant dentistry grows.
If you add that we are not producing enough implant dentists to move forward, we create a situation where more patients require treatment and fewer people provide that treatment. This is a huge problem in many regards, but a massive problem for the implant companies.
At this point, it's worth noting that dentists historically have not really been very interested in learning further details about surgical skills once they have qualified. It's not uncommon for us to meet dentists in the early part of their implant journey who really don't know how to put in a stitch or even tie a stitch properly because they never learned this at university or have forgotten it without using it.
So then there becomes a situation where people who want to embrace the surgery aspect of dental implants need to begin at the basic science level and the basic surgical skills level before moving up to become more competent, more confident surgeons to be able to provide more complex procedures.
It's for this reason that entering into the world of surgical implant dentistry is a real investment in money, time, effort and energy because you cannot learn how to be a better surgeon in a fortnight or even a year. You have to take the principles and concepts of surgery and basic minor oral surgery into your everyday practice, including extraction techniques, apicectomy techniques, and implant surgery techniques - planning, performing, and reflecting to improve moving forward.
The beauty of this is that it is fascinating and exciting to do this. For those who are interested, it reinvigorates and regenerates a whole career pathway, tying in the fact that you meet friends and colleagues that you would never have spent time with and are able to enter into this exciting new world of dentistry that you can grow through and learn in for the rest of your career.
The straightforward aspects of surgery are straightforward, but we need to help people understand that when complexity and complication arise, you either have to have the skills to deal with this or the network to help deal with this.
And so, entering into implant dentistry and the surgical aspects of implant dentistry is the most extraordinary possible line of development in dental careers that I know, but it does take a lot of effort, commitment, and investment to get to a position where you can move forwards and enhance your career for the future.
I am a surgeon and a specialist in surgery, so I am always going to talk about the virtues of surgery as a career pathway and as something of development and interest, but it does not escape me that all dentists qualify from dental school as dental surgeons. I think that the provision of straightforward implant dentistry should be one of the general dental practitioner's skill sets across the whole of the Armamentarium of dentistry.
It's my belief that the best practitioners in the world are generalists.
Implant dentistry allows you to use techniques from periodontology, oral surgery, restorative dentistry, and other aspects of dentistry all in one place, all in one case, and all at the same time.
It's really worth thinking about as a way of either reinvigorating a career that is floundering or inspiring a career that is taking off.
Blog Post Number - 3665
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