Sargon Lazarof, Doctor of Dental Surgery and the creator of the Ultratooth, talks about an invention that replaces single teeth with immediate full function.
What made you invent the Ultratooth?
Dr. Lazarof: I started implantology years ago and one of the biggest difficulties with implants was just that waiting period. After doing it for a few years, I noticed most of my patients in my office were sitting there because of loose temporary dentures and all of that stuff that goes along with the implants. I always wanted, not just me, but the entire industry, to reduce the healing time for implants.
What was the healing time for a traditional implant?
Dr. Lazarof: Four to six months, and that’s just the implant. When you take a tooth out, you lose the gum and bone that surrounds the tooth. When you lose that, you have to first do bone grafting and gum grafting, which takes several months to heal, and then you do the implant. If everything goes well then you give the patient the crown. That process, a lot of times takes about fourteen to sixteen months. And the dentist is responsible for that temporary, whether it’s a flipper or whatever it is. So, a patient is always miserable coming in and asking for adjustments and this and that. If the flipper or the denture puts pressure on the implant, the implant doesn’t take and the whole process falls apart. I always thought that there should be a better answer. So, once when I was sitting in a class myself, learning about implants, the instructor said that we put the screws in and we allow the bone to heal to the screw. And it was that moment that I thought, ’Well, why do we wait for the bone to grow? Why not just have some screw that expands and meets the bone?’ There were a few nights after that, that I woke up at 4:00 in the morning, woke up my wife and I said, “I got a great idea.” And thanks to her, she didn’t say, “Just go back to sleep.” She got up, pulled out a notebook and started drawing. And that was the beginning of a long adventure, tests, FDA approvals and all that. Very happy to say that now, for the first time, dentistry can claim that it has a device that’s actually better than what was there before. When we replace a tooth with an Ultratooth, it is actually stronger than a natural tooth. It’s more aesthetic. We can make it any color, any shape we want. It doesn’t decay. One of the biggest problems with regular implants is that no matter what brand, where it’s placed, all the companies admit you have minimum of 0.2 millimeters of bone loss per year. So, five, ten years later when you’re smiling, you could have threads and metal showing. But the Ultratooth is the first device, because of the Eiffel Tower design that is wider at the apex, which is more stable and takes away the pressure from the crestal bone and the surface area. So, we have cases that go years and years and they haven’t changed. The gums and bones don’t change. That’s one of the biggest features of the Ultratooth.
How long can you expect the Ultratooth to last?
The longest Ultratooth that I have in place is almost 30 years. When I place an Ultratooth, I expect it to last the life of the patient. But, obviously for medical reasons, medical-legal reasons, dentists never guarantee things for life because the patient’s bone is taking care of that. If the patient doesn’t take care of their teeth, they don’t brush, they don’t floss, and take responsibility for it, they could have problems. So, you’ll never hear the dentist guaranteeing anything. But the idea is once it’s there, it should stay there for the life of the patient.
Can you list comparatively a traditional implant, Ultratooth, and their time frames?
Dr. Lazarof: Well the number one feature we’ve talked about. Is Immediate full function. You hear a lot about “one day”, no other device is approved or can take full function at the time of placement. We have the apple bite test when we give the patient an Ultratooth, we give them an apple to bite on. No other device can do that. So, all this advertising that you see, Teeth In a Day and all that – you have patients smiling, showing their dentures. It’s basically a denture that you screw in the mouth, put in four screws and hold the denture in, the patient is not allowed to bite a normal food for a month and a half. So, They’re smiling showing that “these are my teeth” it’s not. It’s actually a denture. Those are acrylic gums and bone that they’re showing. There is no device that can give you a tooth. When they show the Teeth in a Day, one of the requirements is that if you have good teeth, those have to be removed. If you go in and have like four or five teeth that are bad and you want the Teeth in a Day, they have to remove all your teeth and remove some bone to make room for that denture and the bar that goes underneath it to be screwed in. It’s a very aggressive device. Of course, when you remove all the teeth and bone, what you get is something that you can’t bite on for a month and a half. And then once everything is okay, you have the whole thing that is anchored by four screws and if something happens to one of those screws, the whole thing falls apart. The Ultratooth replaces teeth- single – one, two, three. If you want the entire amount, you could do bridges. You could do like three or four bridges and give a patient an entire month. And again, it’s the only device that can stay there and it can give it full function. The other feature, which is very important, is that when you take a tooth out, this gum and bone shape that you have all collapses. That’s the beauty of the tooth. Once that collapses, then you have to go through bone and gum grafting to bring this back. But if you take a tooth out and you put the Ultratooth in the same hole, you put a crown right away, you’re maintaining everything. That’s the other feature, you prevent any losses from occurring.
Can you elaborate further?
Dr. Lazarof: When you take a tooth out, as you can see, the gum shape that surrounds the tooth and the bone- all of that collapses. What you need to do before you bring that back, is we have to do bone and gum grafting, which takes several months, then once everything is created, then you put in the implant, you wait several more months, and then, if everything is perfect, you can put in the tooth. This is with the traditional implants. But with the Ultratooth, when you take a tooth out, this gum shape is there and you put the Ultratooth right in the same socket, then put a tooth on it. So, the patient walks out, and the gum and bone don’t know what’s missing. Now if there is some bone missing, we can go right through the socket, add bone powder, fix the bone, put the crown on, and that’s it. So, all of that process is done within an hour. Several months of treatment are done in a single hour. Now, with the current techniques, we can make crowns immediately, there are milling machines that digitally take impressions and you can actually give a final crown to the patient at the time of placement. It’s just one visit and done.
Can you pick up an Ultratooth and kind of show me how it works?
Dr. Lazarof: Ultratooth is a replacement for the root of the tooth. This is one of the longer examples of it. It comes in different sizes, different lengths, for different teeth. Essentially this is the Ultratooth- the root. The Ultratooth goes in as a screw, once it’s placed, we have a screwdriver that goes in it and actually, by turning the screwdriver, you can see the bottom of the Ultratooth starts expanding and that expansion occurs in bone. By doing this, we put 20 newtons of force on it. There is a device that at a certain pressure, 20 Newtons, this wrench, it’s like a torque wrench, just stops, breaks, and tells you this is sufficient pressure. So, at that pressure, we just stop, but you can see the expansion.
Perfect. Who is the perfect candidate for this?
Dr. Lazarof: Perfect candidate is whoever is losing a tooth.
Dr. Lazarof: The perfect candidate for this is whoever has a tooth problem, a toothache, somebody that has a tooth that hurts and has to be taken out. Somebody with gum disease, gum disease is normally when you have bone loss around a certain number of teeth. The way we treat gum disease, we go down and figure out which teeth are the ones with bone loss and have bacteria that are spreading in the mouth. We go in and replace three or four of them, whichever teeth are involved, but the Ultratooth and the patient no longer have gum disease. We get rid of that source of infection that was spreading in the mouth, like broken down root canals. Many patients have old root canals that the tooth fractures. Patients that don’t have any teeth, they’re wearing dentures and they want fixed teeth, they don’t want to have dentures that go in and out. So, anyone losing a tooth or a tooth loss or a problem tooth. You want to think about Ultratooth first because once you take the tooth out, the ball game changes. The gum and bone go away. Depending on how much you wait, that’s how much damage occurs. If you wait a couple of years then you might have to do the gum and bone grafting, but the sooner you do it and the more immediate, the best. Ultratooth is the only device that is cleared by the FDA for immediate full function.
Who is not a good candidate?
Dr. Lazarof: Anyone medically compromised, anyone that, for example, are severe diabetics or smokers. Anything that inhibits healing, anything that is negative for dental surgery. And we do treat diabetics, we try to control their diet or control the sugar levels because if it’s high, healing doesn’t occur and you can have a larger number of failures. Smoking, same thing. Some patients on osteoporosis medications, drugs like that, it’s been known that they prevent bone healing. So, that might be a counter indication for it.
How much is the cost and where can people get it?
Dr. Lazarof: Currently we have around two hundred centers in the United States. Basically, you go to ultraTooth.com and look for the qualified doctor in your area. Cost-wise, it’s always the least costly device because the other device– let’s say the implant, somebody charges less for the implant, but in the long run, if you calculate the number of appointments, the number of different procedures that you have to pay for, spend time in the dental chair for, makes the cost of the Ultratooth much, much cheaper than anything else.
Can I get a cost?
Dr. Lazarof: Yeah, but in different areas it’s different. For example, in some areas, it should usually be equal to a three-unit bridge. So, if in some areas a bridge is three thousand, Ultratooth will be three thousand, if it’s five thousand, it will be five thousand, some areas are twenty-five hundred. Basically, it should be equal to a three-unit bridge.
Interview conducted by Ivanhoe Broadcast News.
END OF INTERVIEW
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