NYU College Of Dentistry
castan...@gmail.com
Dentistry Clinic on E. 24th. St. in New York City. I'm 48 years old,
in excellent physical condition, but due to horrific childhood
experiences with a dentist who bordered on the sadistic and
inheriting my mother's 'soft teeth' gene I had the body of an athlete
and the mouth of a very old man. Increasingly my life became more
hermit-like as I shied away from any social interaction.
I finally decided to go to NYU College Of Dentistry to discuss getting
a complete set of implants, upper & lower.
For the most part the student dentists, their supervising dentists and
various medical assistants have been professional. But I noticed from
the very beginning 2 things that concerned me. 1) The atmosphere there
at the clinic, while professional, is hectic to the point of
distraction. It's almost impossible to have an in-depth discussion
about the procedures I've experienced without constant interruptions
and a manic-like approach to everything. It's like everyone there has
had way too much coffee. 2) More troubling, I was upfront from the very
beginning about my horrific childhood experiences and my low tolerance
for pain. Several times during various procedures (from extractions to
Sinus Lifts to the placement of lower implants) the supervising
dentist, Dr. Bral, overrode my request to take a moment to gather
myself for the next onslaught of pain caused by the procedure, saying
things like, "We have gone on long enough here, let's just complete the
work. Please sit back and let us do our job". Usually this was more
than halfway into the procedure, I had numerous shots of Novocaine, and
was just wishing for it all to be over with, so I just complied.
About 2 weeks ago 7 implants were placed [Nobel Replace Select Titanium
TiUnite]. Originally they planned to place 8, but Dr. Bral felt one of
the planned implants wasn't safe to do. I was told by both my dentists
and Dr. Bral that the placement of implants was far less uncomfortable
than the 2 Sinus LIfts I had. I was also told the procedure would take
2 hours and that I would be able to have my lower dentures in
afterward. None of that was true. The procedure lasted 3+ hours, 60-75
minutes of which was excruciatingly painful. The student dentist
placing the implants was trying to be sensitive to the pain I was
obviously in and was continually berated by Dr. Bral for this. Two
thirds
the way through, I was drenched in sweat, clearly in intense pain and
the student
dentist, Dr. Francisco, asked me if I needed to take a moment. Dr. Bral
completely overrode this, saying, "We are way over schedule, let's just
finish this".
I somehow managed to endure the next half hour or so of tortuous pain.
Afterward I wrote down on a piece of paper that I felt I needed to
consider having general anesthesia administered when the upper
implants would be placed. When I spoke to Dr. Bral about that he
pooh-pooh'd and there-there'd me, telling me what a wonderful patient I
was and that the placement of upper implants would be one third as
painful as what i just experienced. I didn't believe him, but just
needed to go home and rest. I was also told I needed to wait at least a
week before I could have my lower dentures in.
A week later I received a call from Dr. Francisco that she was told by
Dr. Bral that he needed to see me. She said she wasn't sure what it was
about. When I showed up for my appointment Dr. Bral said, "I've
looked at your Panoramic X-Rays and am concerned with something, so
let's take care of it now." Within two minutes he had shown me the
X-Ray, explained that one of the implants was too close to another and
it had to be removed. "I have everything prepared, this won't take too
long," he said. I was dumbfounded. Not only had Dr. Francisco, the
student dentist who placed the implants not told me about this but I
was not even informed that surgery was scheduled. I had 2 important
meetings
scheduled that day and was in no way psychologically prepared to
undergo an implant extraction.
At first Dr. Bral basically tried to bully me into having it done right
then and there, saying he would be breaking for Summer that week and
time was of the essence.
"Surely someone could do this in a day or two when I'm more prepared,"
I inquired.
Again Dr. Bral tried to convince me to "just get it over with", but I
said I couldn't that day and he finally excused himself for a moment,
came back and scheduled an appointment for this Thursday, July 27th.
I've been trying to find out anything I can about the extraction of
misplaced implants but I have not been able to find even one article on
the subject.
I'm extremely anxious about this. Dr. Francisco has already left on
Summer break, so Dr. Bral will be performing the procedure and I simply
don't trust him to be sensitive to my tolerance level for pain.
Does anyone have any useful information they could share with me?