British Dentist Carries Out His Own Implant Surgery
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- Published: Monday, 21 February 2022 08:34
- Written by Peter Ingle
- Hits: 2310
The newspapers and parliamentary debates have recently been full of tales of DIY dentistry. A dentist that feels the need to place his own implant might raise a few eyebrows.
Many DIY stories involve premedication from the off-licence and the removal of some cusps with equipment from B&Q, often in premises where the CQC might have reasonable concerns. A common feature is that the operators are not registered with the GDC.
There is also nothing new about dentists working on their own mouths, with the odd scaling and amalgam here and there.
However Dentist Michael Norton recently took do-it-myself dentistry to a new level. The well-known London practitioner and specialist in Oral Surgery has been involved with implant dentistry for many years and is a past president of both the Academy of Osseointegration and the Association of Dental Implantology (ADI. UK).
Yesterday I operated on myself. After all if I can’t trust myself, how can my patients!! #NortonImplantshttps://t.co/7EtSbwKEXS
— Norton Implants (@NortonImplants1) February 19, 2022
The days of a Professor of Prosthetics actually wearing dentures are long gone, and most dentists providing implant based restorations are unlikely to need such treatment themselves. Todays dentists would expect to avoid any tooth loss, but after many years placing dental implants for his patients, an olive stone in the wrong place at the wrong time, changed everything for Michael. With his lower left second molar beyond repair it is no surprise that he would chose an implant based substitute. Given his big name contacts within the dental implant world, he could enjoy a wide choice of surgeons. However, Michael chose Michael.
As he put it on his twitter account “After all if I can’t trust myself, how can my patients!!” He has now put an edited video of the procedure on youtube. Filmed in the Dental Fx clinic in Glasgow with experienced implant dentist and principal Stephen Jacobs on hand to verify the procedure, the surgery starts after Michael’s introduction and his smiling announcement that he is “very excited”. The smile briefly goes as he self-administers an ID block but returns as he explains, after “placing Astra Tech implants for 32 years, and finally I get to place one in my own mouth, how exciting.”
After he had torqued the fixture he was still smiling, “perfection, do you want to check it?” he asks Stephen. Stephen must have been happy as the video closes with the two dentists toasting what they hope is a world first with a glass of Scotland’s best known export.
Unsurprisingly the dental twitter world has been active since the video appeared. Comments include admiration from those whose limit for self-treatment is a circuit of their mouth wielding an ultrasonic scaler, to those wondering why he did not get a colleague to do it for him.
Another comment wondered what DLP would make of this, although perhaps acting for Mr M Norton in an action against Mr M Norton might not present many billing opportunities. Most cruel of all perhaps was the suggestion that an American dentist may have done something similar a few weeks ago, and that this was now it was “positively passé.”
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