Before you lose every tooth, get a specialist’s opinion.

Why you are hearing the same recommendation everywhere

There is an old line about how when the only tool you own is a hammer, everything starts to look like a nail.

Clinics that exist to do full-arch implants — where every patient leaves with the same procedure — are not being dishonest. They are doing the one thing they do. The work is often good. Those practices have excellent equipment and a process refined by repetition. The question is not whether they can place implants well. It is whether you needed all of your teeth removed in the first place.

That question is a different specialty.

What a periodontist is trained to do

A periodontist completes dental school and then three additional years of accredited surgical residency devoted to the structures that hold your teeth in place: the gums and the bone. The training is about keeping teeth. Osseous surgery to stop bone loss. Grafting to rebuild what is gone. Regeneration around teeth that look hopeless on an X-ray but are not.

Dr. Yant is a Diplomate of the American Board of Periodontology, which means her training and judgement have been examined and certified by the specialty’s national board. You can verify that yourself through the American Board of Periodontology’s Diplomate locator.

She is also trained and equipped to place full-arch implants, with an in-house laboratory and a digital workflow. So when a second opinion confirms that full-arch really is the right answer, you do not have to start over somewhere else.

When full-arch implants genuinely are the right answer

We are not against full-arch treatment. We perform it, and for the right patient it is life-changing. It is the right call when:

• Periodontal disease has destroyed too much bone for the remaining teeth to be stable long term.
• The teeth that remain would each need extensive treatment with a poor individual prognosis.
• A medical situation makes future extractions dangerous, so resolving everything before treatment begins is safer. Patients about to start high-dose bisphosphonates or chemotherapy are the clearest example.
• Home care cannot realistically support the result of periodontal surgery, and a fixed prosthesis is more maintainable than the teeth.

If your case is one of these, we will tell you, and we will do the work properly.

When it is not

Some patients arrive having been told every tooth must go, when in fact:

• The bone loss is treatable and the teeth are stable enough to keep with surgery and maintenance.
• Only one arch is the problem, not both.
• A few teeth need to go, and the rest can be kept and restored for considerably less money.
• The teeth are periodontally sound and the real problem is restorative.

We see these cases. That is why this page exists.

What a second opinion visit involves

• Bring your records and your treatment plan. The quote, the X-rays, the scans — whatever you were given. If you do not have them, we will take our own.
• A full periodontal examination. Measurements around every tooth, an assessment of bone levels, and a review of your medical history.
• An honest assessment. Which teeth can be saved, which cannot, and what each path would actually involve.
• A written, itemised plan before any treatment begins.

If the other plan was right

Sometimes it is. If the recommendation you received is the correct one, we will say so plainly. You can go back to that clinic and proceed with confidence, or have the work done here. Either way you will make the decision knowing it was the right one.

That is worth a visit before you commit to losing every tooth you have.