Half of General Dentists Are Placing Dental Implants

In this poll, we finally asked a question many of you have requested we cover in one of our surveys: Do you place your own dental implants?

The general dentists in our poll were split on the issue.

Fifty-three percent of the general dentists in our poll responded, "Yes, I place my own implants."

The remaining 47% replied, "No, I refer patients to a specialist."

Not surprisingly, specialists had a very different profile than general dentists.

Four out of five specialists in our poll place dental implants.

Those who do not place implants are endodontists, prosthodontists, and pediatric dentists.

In this survey, geographical location did not seem particularly correlated with placement of implants.

On the other hand, gender was highly correlated with placement of dental implants.

One is tempted to making sweeping generalizations ("Men are more likely to be specialists" or "Women are better at knowing their own limitations"), but one should not jump to conclusions!

Our sample size of female dentists was small. In fact, every female dentist who responded to our survey was a general dentist.

The fact that female specialists were not represented in this poll may help explain these results.