Mini Dental Implants ~ Do They Hurt?

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Mini Dental Implants ~ Do they hurt?

I get asked this question quite often. Of course there is going to be some discomfort you would think having a titanium screw inserted into the jaw bone.....but believe it or not most if not all of my patients claim it was less painful than having an extraction.
Not ever having an implant placed or a tooth removed from my own mouth I always think when I see the condition of most of the mouths that need implants...how is this not hurting to begin with?
But as with most things in life the older I get the more I figure out I don't understand.
So without further adieu...our patient in her early 60's is now ready to introduce her broken down teeth to Dr. Good (as in good by to the broken and unrestorable roots she has left). They have been in this sort of condition for the last decade or so.
The teeth are atraumatically extracted (how an extraction is autraumatic I am not quite certain). But we try and preserve as much bone as possible I guess is the point.
The sockets are packed with our freezed dried mixture of mineralized and de-mineralized bone and closed up tight so we hopefully will have some bone to place our mini implants in a few months.
Tick tock...tick tock...tick tock...
Wow...its now been 4 months all in the space of a few lines.
The patient has mini implants placed in the healed areas and we will splint the minis together with some composite while the integrate into the bone.
On the patients left side the mini ended up having to be placed a bit closer to her natural tooth as there lack of good bone where I wanted to place the mini implant.
She is coming back to see us in 6 weeks and I will continue the post at that time. To keep costs down for her she has elected to have resin crowns made to fit over the mini dental implants.