Harvard Health Letter

Hi, I’m Dr. Todd Shatkin, and welcome to this Monday Morning Minute. I’m so excited to share some news with you that was printed in the Harvard Health letter in April 2021. This is a Harvard Health letter and it came from an interview of Dr. German Gallucci, the department chair of restorative dentistry at Harvard School of Dental Medicine. Now, we’ve been working for close to 20 years to get this kind of recognition about mini dental implants. I’ve been saying this for 20 years.

Dr. Gallucci is finally putting in the Harvard Health letter saying that mini implants are here and they work. So I want to read a few quotes from him. It says the title of the article is big Advances for Dental Implants. Smaller sizes and high tech placement methods means more people are candidates for prosthetic teeth. Now, the first sentence, the first paragraph starts out, if you’ve been told you’re not a candidate for dental implants, it’s time to revisit the subject. Dental implants, permanent prosthetics implanted into the jaw have changed in the last five years.

We’ve learned that smaller implants can work just as well as regular size implants and this makes more people candidates for them, says Dr. German Gallucci, department chair of Restorative Dentistry at the Harvard School of Dental Medicine. Now, yes, they’re admitting now that in the past five years they’ve got proof that small diameter or mini implants work as well as larger implants. Now, I’ve been saying it for 20 years. Dr. Gordon Christensen has been saying it probably for the last 15 years. And now we’ve got the department chair at Harvard School of Dental Medicine coming out with a very bold statement that smaller implants can work just as well as regular size implants.

Now, I’m going to go on to further to say a couple more quotes, but now there’s an option for people who don’t have enough bone. Many implants are about half the width of regular implants. The all in one construction helps make the prosthetic strong despite its smaller size. Many and regular size implants have similar successes. And he says they’re faster and safer, less invasive, more efficient. So what have we been saying for years? We’ve been saying they’re five times less. They’re less invasive, there’s less pain, there’s less time, there’s less visits to the dentist, and it’s less money. So they are obviously here to stay.

Many implants from Shatkin F.I.R.S.T.® Are here to stay. We’ve been promoting these for decades now, and you are the beneficiary of the opportunity to place these smaller diameter implants on your patients and change their lives. And I know you get criticism from the oral surgeons and the prosthodontist and specialist periodontist. But now we have additional literature out there from the Harvard Health letter from Dr. German Gallucci stating that the mini implants are just as effective and the success rates are just as good as the larger implants.

So I want to send this to all of you. We’re going to email this to all of you this coming week. A copy of this so you all have it. You can print it out, put it in your waiting room or whatever you like to do. Give it to those specialists who question you and make sure that you let them know that this is not just you doing these many implants. There’s thousands of dentists throughout the country doing them. Tens of thousands. And it is standard of care. And now, Dr. German gallucci. Thank you for coming through with this bold statement from Harvard School of Dental Medicine. I’m Dr. Todd Shatkin and I’ll be with you on the next Monday morning minute.