Dental Implant Training Requirements

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 general dentists, oral surgeons, prosthodontists, and periodontists.

The legal training requirements for dentists who carry out implant treatment differ from country to country. In the most countries, implant dentistry is considered 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 usually need to undergo additional formal postgraduate training.

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