Dental implants in Belfast

What a dental implant actually is

An implant is a titanium screw, usually between eight and thirteen millimetres long, that takes the place of a tooth root in the jaw. It is not the tooth. The tooth — a crown, a bridge or a full arch — is made separately and attached to it once the bone has grown onto the implant surface.

That distinction is the whole of it. A bridge and a denture replace what shows above the gum and leave the space beneath it empty. An implant replaces what was in the bone, which is why it holds and why it stops the ridge from shrinking.

The reason it works is a property of titanium discovered by accident in the 1950s: living bone will grow directly onto its surface and bond to it, a process called osseointegration. That takes three to four months, which is why implant treatment has a waiting period in the middle that nothing can shorten.

Bone behaves like muscle — it is maintained by being used. A tooth root transmits the force of biting into the jaw and the jaw keeps the bone. Remove the root and the signal stops: roughly a quarter of the width of the ridge goes in the first year, and it continues slowly thereafter. An implant is the only replacement that interrupts that.

Who implants are for — and who they’re not for

Most adults missing one or more teeth are suitable. The honest exclusions are shorter than people expect, and they are worth stating plainly because being told “you’re not suitable” without a reason is the single most common thing patients arrive here having been told.

Genuine contraindications

• Uncontrolled diabetes. Well-controlled diabetes barely changes the outcome. Poorly controlled diabetes impairs healing and raises infection risk materially. We ask for a recent HbA1c and would usually rather help you get it down than proceed and watch an implant fail.
• Heavy smoking. Failure rates roughly double, and the effect is worse on grafted sites. We ask for two weeks before and eight weeks after surgery.
• Active, untreated gum disease. Not a permanent exclusion, but it must be treated first. Placing an implant into a mouth with active periodontal disease puts it into a bacterial reservoir.
• Intravenous bisphosphonates and some related drugs. Oral forms carry a small risk; intravenous forms carry a higher one. We need the drug, the dose and the duration, and sometimes a conversation with your GP.
• An incomplete jaw. Around eighteen for women and twenty-one for men. There is no upper age limit — we have treated patients in their eighties.
• Recent radiotherapy to the jaw, and a small number of other medical situations we assess individually.

What is not a contraindication

Being told you have insufficient bone, which is usually a step in the plan rather than a refusal — see bone grafting and sinus lifts. Being over seventy. Wearing a denture already. Having had an implant fail before.

Your options

Four treatments cover almost everything, and which one applies is mostly a question of how many teeth are involved and where they are.

The process, step by step

Six stages from the first appointment to routine maintenance. The waiting in the middle is healing time, not appointment time — you are not attending the clinic for four months.

Dental implants in Belfast: what it costs

Every figure we charge is published. Most implant clinics will not put a price on a website, which is a common reason people give up on the idea before they have made an enquiry.

A consultation is £95. It includes the examination, the CBCT scan and a written plan, and it comes off the cost of treatment if you go ahead. If you do not, the scan and the plan are yours to take to another dentist.

Most patients spread the cost over 12 to 60 months at 0% APR. £12,500 over 60 months is £208.33 a month. Finance is subject to status, and Ardan Implant Clinic acts as a credit broker, not a lender. This is placeholder regulatory wording on a concept site and would need review before use on a live one.

How long implants last

The published figures put implant survival at around 95% at ten years and near 90% at fifteen. The crown or bridge on top is the part that wears — expect ten to fifteen years from a ceramic crown, less if you grind your teeth. Replacing a crown on a sound implant is routine and far cheaper than the original treatment.

What decides which end of that range you land at is maintenance. An implant does not decay, but it can lose the bone around it, and the tissue around an implant has a poorer blood supply and fewer anchoring fibres than the tissue around a tooth. Inflammation spreads faster and gives less warning.

In practice that means an interdental brush around each implant daily, and a hygienist every six months who measures rather than polishes. Every plan here includes those appointments, and the guarantee — five years on the implant, two on the crown — depends on attending them. That is the mechanism, not the small print. The full guide sets out the figures.

Risks and what can go wrong

Very few implant websites carry this section, which is precisely why it is worth reading. None of the following is common. All of it is discussed at the consultation and written into the consent form, and you should expect the same anywhere else you go.

• Failure to integrate — one or two implants in a hundred do not bond to the bone, usually within the first few months. The implant is removed, the site is grafted, and it is generally replaced successfully six months later. Within the guarantee period we do that at no charge.
• Peri-implantitis — inflammatory bone loss around an implant that has been working for years. Something in the region of one in five implants shows some degree of it at ten years. It is usually painless until advanced, which is what the six-monthly measurements are for.
• Nerve injury in the lower jaw, causing altered sensation in the lip or chin. Rare, and the main reason we will not place a lower back implant without a CBCT scan showing exactly where the nerve canal runs. Most cases that do occur resolve; a small number do not.
• Sinus complications in the upper jaw, including perforation of the sinus membrane during a lift. Usually managed at the same appointment without changing the outcome.
• Mechanical problems — a loose screw, a chipped ceramic, a fractured component. Not dangerous, generally straightforward to repair, and more likely if you grind your teeth.
• An aesthetic result you are not happy with, particularly with a single front tooth beside a natural one. This is the hardest case in implant dentistry. We would rather remake a crown than have you live with one.

Why patients travel to us from across Northern Ireland

Roughly half of the people treated here drive past a dental practice on their way. They come from Belfast, Lisburn, Bangor, Newtownards, Antrim, Ballymena and further, and from the Republic as well.

The reasons they give are consistent. This clinic does one thing, so the surgeon has placed over a thousand implants rather than a few dozen. The scanner, the surgical guide printer and the laboratory are all on the premises, so a case is planned, made and adjusted in one building. And the prices are published, which means the first conversation is about whether the treatment is right rather than about what it might cost.

Drive times: Lisburn 20 minutes, Bangor 35 minutes, Ballymena 45 minutes, Newry 55 minutes. There is parking for eight cars on site and a ground-floor surgery with step-free access, which for our patients is not a small detail. There are pages for Lisburn, Bangor, Newry and Ballymena with the practical detail for each.