Have you reached peak implant yet?
Peak implant is that period after you learn to do implants, and have some surgical confidence and skill, and are trying to squeeze as many into every available patient as possible.
Warnings about long term problems from more experienced practitioners are ignored because you are better trained, more careful and use fancier technology than previous generations.
This is usually accompanied by boasts to your friends about how many you do a year.
Peak implant is usually followed by implant depression as your cases age and get complications you didn’t warn the patient about. Suddenly, you realise that implants are not the cure for perio and you feel a bit of a dill doing scaling and root planing on an implant with threads rather than a smooth tooth root.
The cases where you extracted all the teeth, and now they have broken the full arch prosthesis three times makes you long for a Linde bridge with the proprioception of periodontal ligaments. Fearing the patients law degree, you chew up the profit of the next seven implants doing repairs for free.
That short period where you did twenty ridge splits made you aware of the amount of resorption that occurs when you split.
That immediate molar craze that you are hoping the periodontist can fix
The all on four case which, now that the patient has peri-implantitis, you are regretting the 8mm alveolectomy in a 35 year old.
Now you reach grumpy old man of implants stage, where you warn youngsters of the perils of removing teeth.
They ignore you of course.
They are better trained, more careful and use fancier technology than you do.
Which stage are you at? Have you reached peak implant yet?
