Saving an infected implant

Q: I had an implant and crown done recently. I experienced pain, swelling and puss coming out of the gum. What is going on?

A : Wow. I just had a patient with the same thing. (Unless this is that same patient emailing me this question?! If it is: “Hello Mrs Nussbaum! I am glad all worked out with the treatment. Oh and you left your umbrella at my office.)

Hey. Fun fact. When I first started this column back in 2004, when women did not wear eyelashes the size of tarantulas and men didn’t wear flip-flops and shorts on airplanes, half the columns were questions my mom wrote in!

If the implant or crown is not loose and the xray shows no sever bone loss around the threads of the implant, then we explore. I got the patient numb, flapped open the gum and found a few pieces of floating dead bone; what we call: sequestrum.  I removed the pieces, drilled out some infected divots in the crest of the bone, and placed small pieces of bone graft material to fill the voids. I then sutured the flap closed.

Job done.