Dental Implant Removal

Yesterday I had my tooth #9 dental implant removed. More about the whys in a later post, having some thoughts about throwing together a power point presentation or something with all the gory details.

Anyway, KUDOS to Andy Kessler's book The End of Medicine: How Silicon Valley (and Naked Mice) Will Reboot Your Doctor Because of his book, I was very aware of medical imaging technology (CAT, MRI, PET, etc). Consequently, I asked for a CAT scan given the nature of my dental implant situation - infection very near the site but apparent lack of any inflammation at the implant itself. The dentist agreed.

As you might see in the attached photo, we found:

• void behind the implant that was not showing up in the normal x-rays
• extremely thin bone in front of the implant that was not showing up in the normal x-rays
• a hole in the bone at "the root" of the implant

BONUS - something weird going on with an old root canal a few teeth over.

Although it wiped out my remaining dental insurance, the root canal was retreated first.

Two weeks later I had the implant removal done, finding source of infection, a bone lesion, etc.