Dental implant specialists
If you’re looking for a dental implant specialist in Bristol you may be surprised to know that officially there is no such thing. Even though there are many implant dentists in Bristol that devote all of their time to dental implant work, you will notice the conspicuous absence of the term “dental implant specialist” on their web sites.
The use of the term “specialist” within dentistry is tightly controlled by the General dental Council and even though there are other officially recognised specialists within dentistry, the GDC does not currently recognise the speciality of “dental implant specialist”.
Any dentist who uses the term “dental implant specialist” currently faces disciplinary action and could be struck off.
The absence of a formal training structure and lack of accreditation with the GDC leaves the public in the dark when it comes to choosing an implant dentist. Patients currently need to carefully check the experience and training of their dentist before under-going implant work. This is not easily done but patients should simply ask the dentist, or their staff, what his or her experience is and ask what their failure rate is. It is not really possible for a dentist to give their failure rate until they have been placing implants for at least five years and it is widely accepted within the profession that many dentists will record a higher failure rate during their early cases.