My wife has practiced perio for 10+ years. She bought a practice from a 71 yo periodontist, who didn’t place any implants. As soon as she took over, she added implants to her practice. To achieve this, she had to spent a lot of time at the referring dentists’ offices to teach them how to take impressions, how to restore single tooth implants, implant retained over dentures, implant support overdentures, and full mouth fixed implants etc. To make the GPs’ lives easier, she even adjusts and relines the dentures for the patients at her office, instead of making the patients drive back to the GP office. She doesn’t just place implants. She also helps the GPs repair implants that were placed by other specialists. She is very good at removing the implant retaining screws, that fracture right at the implant level. She is able to identify the implant parts and orders the correct replacement parts for the patients. Currently, more 50% of the procedures at her office are implant related.
When she purchased the office, she worked 4 days/week at her own office and 2 days/week at other GP offices. Yes, she worked 6 days a week. That's because we still had lots of student loans and our oldest child was only 3 years old. Now, she only works 2-3 days/week from 9am-1pm…only 5 days/month at her own office and the rest at other GP offices. The reason for working less is she stops doing hygiene at her office and refers most of the patients back to the referring GP offices for SRP. Her office also gets fewer referrals because many of the referring GPs has asked her to come to their offices to place implants. My wife actually prefers going to the GP offices because it’s easy money and no headache of managing the office and dealing with the referring GPs.
Different perio programs have different teaching philosophies. Some programs let you use all kinds of allograft materials. My wife’s perio program doesn’t believe in using allograft materials, especially when it is a site for dental implant. They just let the extracted socket heals on its own for a 2-3 months without putting any allograft material in there, then they place the implant. For severely thin ridge areas, they taught her how to do block bone grafts, that are harvested from either the ramus or chin. OK, that’s all I know and can tell you about perio.
I am glad that my wife chose perio. It allows her to make decent income without having to work long hours every day. The kids grow up so fast and you can’t really turn back the clock to extend the time you have with them.
