Post surgical pain and the complications,
such as swelling, is one of the most common concerns
for patients interested in receiving implant therapy.
Local anesthesia, in most cases, is enough to ensure that
no discomfort is felt during implant placement,
but what happens after the patients leave the dental chair?
In a recent study in our clinic,
we asked patients to keep a healing diary
for two weeks after the implant surgery.
It revealed that, for the majority of cases,
implant surgery was well tolerated.
Minor discomfort, such as swelling and pain, was transitory,
limited mainly to the first three days post-operation,
and could be well controlled
with simple over-the-counter drug NSAID.
When comparing with other routine dental alveolar surgeries,
for the patients getting more
straightforward implant surgeries,
discomfort felt during healing
was similar to that of simple tooth extraction.
In the same graph, you can see that
the level of pain increased when guided bone regeneration
was used in conjunction with implant surgery,
something that might be attributed
to the higher invasiveness,
and the longer duration of the procedure.