Immediate implant placement in the front of the mouth
Whose work this is
- Clinical work by
- Independent clinicians publishing through Nobel Biocare's clinical library
- Published by
- Nobel Biocare Services AG
This page is our summary in our own words. The original material is not reproduced here.
Read the original at Nobel Biocare Services AG →
What the published work covers
The manufacturer maintains a library of documented cases contributed by independent clinicians, covering immediate placement in the anterior maxilla — the visible front of the upper jaw, and the region where the aesthetic stakes are highest.
We summarise the themes here in patient language. We do not reproduce those cases, their images or their text. They are the clinical work of the named clinicians who performed them, published by Nobel Biocare, and the patients in them consented to that publication — not to appearing on this site. The link above goes to the originals.
The recurring theme
The front of the upper jaw is where immediate placement is most attractive and least forgiving. It is attractive because the shape of the gum around a front tooth is what makes a crown look real, and that shape collapses inward during the months a socket takes to heal. Placing an implant at the time of extraction gives the tissue something to hold its form around.
It is unforgiving because the bone plate on the outer surface of a front socket is often less than a millimetre thick, and sometimes already gone by the time the tooth is removed. An implant needs bone; where that plate has failed, the honest sequence is to graft and wait.
What this means for a patient reading it
Two things worth carrying into a consultation.
First, ask what your outer bone plate looks like on the CBCT. It is the single measurement that decides whether immediate placement at the front is realistic, and it cannot be seen on a panoramic radiograph.
Second, expect the plan to have a branch in it. A surgeon who says “we will place immediately if the socket allows, and graft if it does not” is describing careful practice, not indecision.
What we cannot tell you from this
Published cases are selected examples, not a survival statistic. They demonstrate what a technique can achieve in the hands of the clinician who published it; they do not establish how often it achieves that, and they say nothing about your own anatomy.