Articles Tagged with Dental Implant

If you are a dental patient in Georgia and you suspect that your dentist may be recommending treatments you don’t actually need or if you sustain and injury from a dental procedure and suspect that the injury was caused by dental malpractice, you can complain to the dental board. However, the odds are pretty good that nothing will happen and to add insult to injury, many times the dental board will drag out the proceedings until after the statute of limitations has run, effectively precluding you from filing a lawsuit and suing the dentist for the malpractice.

As is true for other medical professions, state dental boards are typically made up of dentists overseeing dentists, leaving the profession to police itself. This is certainly true of the Georgia Board of Dentistry, which, as of last count, is compromised of almost all dentists. While this is the norm, and certainly not illegal, it does cause suspicion as to just how objective the board will be when looking into your situation.

Nationwide, dentists rarely have their licenses pulled by their dental boards. In 2018, according to the Department of Health and Human Services, state boards revoked or suspended only 225 licenses – 0.1% of all dentists. Ten states didn’t suspend a single dentist.

An Improperly Installed Dental Implant Is The Result of Dental Error

Dental implants must be placed carefully to ensure that they will heal properly and be able to bear the stress of biting and chewing. Common errors made by dentists, oral surgeons and periodontists who incorrectly install implants include placing the implant in areas without sufficient bone density or placing the implant too deep in the jaw so that it impinges on the nerves in the lower jaw or the sinus cavity in the upper jaw. In both instances, this is a result of dental malpractice. These mistakes can be avoided by using an experienced dentist who utilizes 3D CT scans and mapping to plan the placement of the implants prior to installing them.

Not All Dentists Are Created Equal

A number of different dental procedures result in the majority of dental malpractice claims in Georgia. As an Atlanta Dental Malpractice Attorney, I have noticed recently that the top five procedures that lead to dental injuries and malpractice claims are: Root Canals, Dental Implants, Crowns, Lower Molar Extractions and Jaw Surgery.

Root Canals on the lower teeth are especially problematic as many people can suffer serious dental injuries as a result of a root canal procedures. It is especially troubling for the injured patient when they seek relief from pain in the form of route canal yet wind up with a more serious condition as a result of the care and treatment rendered to them by the dentist that they went to for the relief of pain. However, serious injuries result from many root canal procedures because, many times, the root canal procedures are performed very close to anatomical landmarks in the jaw and face which are at risk of being injured if a root canal is not performed properly.

Dental implants are a doing growing area of dentistry that offers a viable alternative to traditional bridges and other false tooth devices which dentists have in the past used to replace teeth that were extracted. Once again, this is a great advancement in dentistry which comes with many caveats. What can be more frustrating for a dental patient than to spend the time and money on all of the different procedures that lead up to have a dental implant placement, yet leave the dental chair in worse condition than when they had started the dental implant procedure process.