Cost isn’t the only thing you should be asking when it comes to something as important as dental implants! Especially if you’re opting for the All-on-4 Dental Implant procedure. It can mean the difference between a happy, exciting dream come true, or a costly, time consuming battle. So how do you choose the right dentist? In this video, we share with you the top 5 questions that you should ask during your consultation before committing to any surgery. Want to ask us these questions, and more? Come on in for a free consultation!
5 Most Important Questions Video Script
Hi, I’m Dr. Hendriks. I am so grateful to be able to share with you the five most important questions that you should ask before you choose a provider for your dental implant surgery.
Number one, you need to make sure that you do all your homework on the doctor and how much experience he has. You want to go through the website, you want to go through Google reviews, you want to go through even Better Business Bureau, you want to find out if they’d been sued for anything. I’m not saying that people had been sued or guilty, but if you have multiple lawsuits out that might say that there’s been some miscommunications and possibly some negligence. When you’re looking at for a doctor to do your implant surgery, you’re looking for someone that can show you by examples that they’re really good at what they do.
Number two, unlike buying a car, a truck implant procedures are so different, and going to one office or another office, it can be a completely different product and service. You should ask the doctor where do you send the lab work? Is it here in the United States? Is it here locally? They should have some type of website. I recommend you go to the website and look and see what the expertise of this lab is. No matter where the lab work is sent, this question should always be answered. I think you should also ask the question are there any warranties in place in case something happens in the future?
Once you know exactly where you’re going to have the lab work sent, this is an important question you should ask your doctor, and that is what type of materials are you going to use? There are lots of different materials and all on for procedure is just a surgical procedure. What you put on top of it, the bridge that we place on top, can be a number of different things. You could have an all acrylic bridge, you can have a tenia bridge you can have a trilor, a pectin, you can have a titanium, or you can have zirconia. Six different types of bridges and I’m just naming a few of them, and depending on what material is being used, it can come with certain complications. If you asked the question, “Hey doc, what type of materials are using?” and they act funny about it all, this might be an indication that there may be corners being cut.
Number three, I call them contingency plans. When things go right, it’s awesome, but no matter what you do, in what profession, there’s always speed bumps, and sometimes you might have things come up that you’re not planning on. This is why I have to ask the doctor, what contingency plans do you have in place for failed implants, for devices that break prematurely? What if you get infection a few months out? If something doesn’t work out? Is there a plan in place now that’s going to help us save us time, money, or future emotional pain so that we don’t have to experience a worst case scenario?
It’s really important also to remember that there always will be the cost of cleanings in the future and there’ll be some maintenance associated with any device that you have put in your mouth. It’s important to find out what those costs are upfront, because sometimes our some really big costs that can come behind that if you’re not prepared for it, you can be very upset with. I know offices here locally that actually will put their price super high so they don’t have to worry about cleaning their patient’s teeth. You should ask these questions upfront.
Number four, timeline. This is something that can really frustrate patient. Some doctors say they’re going to be in treatment for six months, but end up taking a full year, and so if you talk to them and say, “Doc, can I see a timeline of when the surgery starts and every appointment that you plan to have so I can guesstimate when we’re going to be finished?” It’s not a perfect science, but a doctor that doesn’t have a game plan for you is a doctor that might be confused as to what the treatment should be or could be.
In really great offices, they’re going to give you a sheet that says we have five different appointments or 10 appointments, and this is how long the appointments going to last. This is what you should expect, and this is how much you should pay. I have experienced times where treatment has gone much longer than I expected also. But here’s the thing, doctors offices that have done it over and over again get better and better, and that’s why you want to find a doctor who has tons of experience, has been through the rodeo, has worked with lots of labs, and seen the worst of the worst. The cool thing is that today in certain offices, you can actually condense that time into as little as a week. That’s the cool thing. Instead of being in treatment for six to 12 months, you literally could have the treatment done in less than a week.
And lastly, number five, what is the focus of the practice? Is this a practice that does lots of general dentistry and a little bit of all on four or is it a practice that does mainly all end for, and just a little bit of general dentistry? Would you rather have someone that does that procedure every day or once a month? When an office focuses squarely on all on four, that means that there’s going to be a team of well-qualified people that are going to help support you. The doctor is just one person. It’s so important to do the research on the doctor, but here’s the thing, the doctors one of probably 10 or 15 individuals. And so as you look at the practice, look at the people when you walk in, how do they treat you?
The doctor could have amazing experience and you may like them a ton, but the reality is he’s probably just going to do the surgical portion of the procedure. The majority of the work is done by the staff, the assistants, and the team. Even though you want to develop that relationship with the doctor, if you don’t have a good feeling about the people that work around him, that’s a pretty good indication that you probably should find somewhere else.
All right, let’s go ahead and recap. These are the top five questions you ask before picking an all on for dental implant provider. Number one, doctor experience. Number two, what materials are being used and where are they coming from? Number three, contingency plans the doctor has in place in worst case scenarios. Four, the timeline. How long is it going to take? And five, the team. Are they going to fit with your personality, with what needs you have?
Thank you so much for watching. If you have any other questions, please reach out to us and we’ll answer those questions. If you’d like to interview me and ask me these five top questions, I would be happy to. If you look at other videos, you’ll see that we have answers to all these questions. We love what we do at Dream Dental. We’d love to be able to help you. Please call us, let us know how we can serve you. What we say here every single day is we don’t just change smiles, we change lives.
