formation

Training

While there is no specialty recognized by the ADA for dental implants, there are two surgical specialties in dentistry, Oral Surgery and Periodontics, and the Standard of Care for surgical procedures are set by those two specialties. Implant surgery may be performed as an outpatient under general anesthesia, oral conscious sedation, nitrous oxide sedation, intravenous sedation or under local anesthesia by trained and certified clinicians including periodontists, oral surgeons, general dentists, and prosthodontists.

The legal training requirements for dentists who carry out implant treatment differ from country to country. In the UK implant dentistry is considered by the General Dental Council to be a postgraduate sphere of dentistry. In other words it is not sufficiently covered during the teaching of the university dental degree course and dentists wishing to practice in dental implantology legally need to undergo additional formal postgraduate training. The General Dental Council has published strict guidelines on the training required for a dentist to be able to place dental implants in general dental practice.^[11] UK dentists need to complete a competency assessed postgraduate extended learning program before providing implant dentistry to patients.

The degree to which both graduate and post-graduate dentists receive training in the surgical placement of implants varies from country to country,^[12][13][14] but it seems likely that lack of formal training will lead to higher complication rates.^[15]