A specialist should decide whether your teeth come out.

It depends what you are coming in for. Free, including X-rays: consultations for full-arch implants, implant-secured dentures and custom dentures, with no obligation to book treatment afterward. Billed to your dental insurance: periodontal consultations — gum disease, recession, grafting, crown lengthening — and second opinions. Those two are a specialist examination rather than a sales appointment. We bill your insurance directly, and you will have a written, itemised quote before any treatment begins.

Every surgical procedure here is performed by Dr. Kristen Yant, a Diplomate of the American Board of Periodontology. The specialist who plans your case is the one who carries it out and sees it through to the end — you are not handed to a different provider partway through. At a consultation you may meet Dr. Yant or Dr. Poovey, whose focus is oral medicine and medically complex patients. Periodontal consultations and second opinions are always with Dr. Yant.

A periodontist is a dental specialist who has completed three additional years of accredited surgical residency after dental school, focused on the gums and the bone that hold your teeth in place, and on placing dental implants. Board certification goes a step further and requires examination by the American Board of Periodontology. It matters because implant surgery is surgery. Many dentists offering implants have taken continuing-education courses rather than completing a residency — they have not spent three years learning to save teeth, so removing them is more likely to be the recommendation.

Yes, and we would encourage it. A clinic that only performs full-arch implants will tend to recommend full-arch implants. Sometimes that is genuinely the right answer, and when it is, we will tell you and we perform that treatment here. But we also see patients whose teeth can be saved. Bring the treatment plan you were given and we will tell you honestly what we would do differently, and why.

Yes. We accept Delta Dental, Cigna and Blue Cross Blue Shield, we bill your insurance for you and we work to get the most out of your benefits. We do not accept Medicaid. We can also bill medical insurance for patients with certain conditions — heart disease, cancer, kidney disease, organ transplant, diabetes and osteoporosis among them — coordinating with your physician. Most dental offices cannot do this.

Both, and the combination is the point. Dr. Kristen Yant is a board-certified periodontist — a Diplomate of the American Board of Periodontology — with three years of surgical residency training in gum disease, bone loss and recession. Many practices offering full-arch implants have no periodontist at all, which means the option of saving your teeth is never really on the table. Here it is.