Six of my back teeth had been split down to the root
Mrs. D.W., 29 years old, Munich

It happened in August last summer. After a nice day at the pool, I made my way back home on my roller blades. It wasn’t due to anything on the path but for some reason I stumbled and fell down horribly, with my chin onto the concrete.

Initially I didn’t know what had happened and then all of a sudden, I found myself in the Perlacher Hospital emergency room. The first thing they did there was to stitch my wound on my chin.

The bad news was still to come. Some of my back teeth were in quite a state, as the upper and lower jaw had come down on each other pretty severely when I hit the ground. Immediately I had to go to a hospital in Munich, which took over the initial treatment of such a case. As the inner side of the three teeth on the left and three teeth on the right in the upper jaw were practically completely shattered, the priority was to remove the splinters. After that it was necessary to stabilise what remained of my teeth with a plastic compound.

Finally both my upper and lower jaws were realigned with wire to make my “bite” right. I had suffered such severe injuries to my jaw, that it became incredibly painful to open and shut my mouth. This condition only started to improve once I had had several hours of physiotherapy.

Then I finally reached the stage when I could actually move my mouth and therefore dentistry work could begin on my teeth. As recommended in the clinic, I looked for an implant specialist and “ended up” at Dr. Bartels. His first diagnosis was very depressing: five teeth in my upper jaw would have to extracted and replaced by an implant. He was going to try and rescue one other tooth and crown it.
The really sad thing about all of this was, that up to this stage I hadn’t had a single filling in my mouth. And then this . . .

During a long session in the chair and under local anaesthetic, my five teeth were extracted and immediately replaced with five titanium implants. At the same stage a crown was fitted onto my ‘rescued’ tooth. I had luck from bad luck: as I was still so young and my jaw bone was still very strong, just two days later ‘interim crowns’ were screwed onto my implants. I didn’t have to wear any dentures and was therefore more than willing to eat just porridge or soup in the initial phase.

At the beginning the titanium implants should not be put under too much stress in order for them to heal into the bone. During the first two months, in order to help the healing process as much as possible, I had to come back to the practice for regular check-ups and rinsing.

But I’ve made it! After six months I got my final ceramic teeth. Now I can bite like I did with my own teeth. I am really happy that there are such things as implants today. Only a few years ago, I would not have had the choice and it would have meant that I was 29 years old with a denture in my upper jaw!