What is implant dentistry about?

If something became apparent over the days at the implant course it was that the actual drilling and placement of the implant was the simple part of the procedure. Proper placement is vital and should be prosthodontically driven but it is not the difficult part of the procedure. Flap design, handling of soft tissues, hard tissue grafting and suturing were the aspects of the procedure that would make or break the success of the final functional and aesthetic result of the case. Even before this, careful extraction and socket grafting were important in producing a surgical site that would easily accept an implant.

When going to implant courses it is important to choose a course or a combination of courses that will teach you these aspects of treatment because the majority of implant cases would benefit from some form of hard or soft tissue grafting and the lack of these can be considered a compromised result. Courses that allow a bulk placement of implants in a short period of time may be useful in practicing the actual implant placement but may not be successful in teaching the auxiliary procedures to augment success. They also lack the ability to see your successes and failure and to learn how to deal with complications. Once you have seen what can happen and learn to manage failure it will become less scary to perform the procedure in the first place knowing that you can handle whatever comes.