Implant question

[Bazgriffo1967]

Hi all.. Yesterday I had drilling and three dental implants inserted, i was told it went well.. I have a concern though, because with two of the three implants the surgeon used what I can only describe as a ratchet to screw down the implant nice and tight, but with the third he jeasily just screwed it in with his fingers, wasn't a tight fit at all, is this okay no ratchet required?
Thanks for any possible help.

 

[Oceansightdental]

Lol, wow you pay close attention. There's two major reasons we put an implant in with our fingers insteda of using a ratchet: Bone is too stiff or bone is too weak. If your bone was too stiff then this is not an issue whatsoever. If on the other hand your bone was too weak, then you need to be careful not to apply any pressure to the implants. Occasionally, when we're placing a dental implant near the sinuses (upper back region), we use hand torque to ensure that the implant doesn't fall into the sinus. My recommendation is to not stress and let your dentist handle this one. It sounds like he or she knows what to do.
Ali Jazayeri DDS

 

[Bazgriffo1967]

Thank you for your kind reply Dr Jazayeri..
All three of my implants are lower jaw molars..
I've had a thought though... the one implant that was screwed in by hand only, happens to be right nextdoor to one that a ratchet was used for, is that common practice? My thinking is, you can't torque off two implants that sit only mm's apart from one another, in case of fracture maybe?
Im probably way off the mark but thought it might be worth mentioning.
Kind regards,
Barrie

 

[Oceansightdental]

Well the fact that the implants are in the lower jaw is great since the mandible has much higher bone quality for implant placement. The torquing has nothing to do with implant proximity. There's two scenarios here: (a) your bone was so stiff that your dentist was comfortable hand torquing it in place. (b) You recently had a tooth pulled in the region and the area still had softer bone. In these cases, we can't get enough stability on the implant so we just throw it in there and hope for the best. Hope this helps. If you attach an X-ray I can tell you exactly what is going on.