Subperiosteal implant experience
I couldn't find many personal experience stories for the newer subperiosteal implants, so I figured I would post mine. Sorry for the long post, but I wish I had been able to find something like this prior to my surgery.
Background: I'm 35 and have been missing most of my teeth since I was a teenager (shitty mom, long traumatic story). I had a full lower on 7 regular implants done about 7 years ago and had a great experience with a regular dentist. Since my teeth had been missing for 20 years, I had severe maxillary atrophy and would have needed a sinus lift for upper implants and my dentist referred me to OMFS who then referred me to the nearest large educational institution specifically for a subperiosteal consultation.
The details: OMFS at this university uses KLS IPS. We discussed pros and cons, zygomatic implants, sinus lift for regular implants, but ultimately decided that subperiosteal would be the best fit for my needs. They boasted a high success rate with this surgery and similar ones using 3d printed implants, stated that although this is an old procedure, the new innovations have changed it significantly and offer much better outcomes with fewer complications. Surgery was LONG (6 or 7 hours I think), done under procedural sedation, I left swollen but with somehow no major bruising and minimal swelling all things considered. I left with my temporary denture attached, went back to work 9 days after surgery.
Things I wasnt prepared for: I had maxillary nerve damage which caused my face to be numb for going on 2 months now. It's gotten better, the numbness is weird, but the hardest part was the nerve pain that was constant for about a month and nothing touched. I stuck to ibuprofen and tylenol, but that was useless. It was genuinely the most painful experience other than gallstones, but one day it just stopped and I've been fine since. Eating a mostly liquid/soft diet is so hard. I had to relearn to talk.
The result: I'm over 2 months post op now and despite the rough times, I'm so glad that I did this. I was healed enough to start my 2nd prosthetic (my OMFS does 3 total with the 3rd being the final product) and was cleared for a more normal diet (still no chewy foods or hard foods). Having a full mouth of non removable teeth after about 15 years of a removable upper denture was life changing for me. I was worried that having metal implanted into my face would change my face (I'm young and female so this might not be as important to all demographics), but i look about the same, maybe even a little bit better because it filled out my bone structure that I had lost from the atrophy.
The cost: this was the thing I found the least info on when I was trying to research. I knew the cost of my lower 7 and the prosthetic, I had gotten estimates from my dentist for upper with the sinus lift, so i had been saving for years knowing a permanent implant denture was the goal. That being said, I had a full blown panic attack when they gave me the cost. It cost about half a years worth of my salary, i had saved up enough to cover the surgery part and had to borrow from my 401k to cover the prosthetic part.
I'm attaching pictures of my most recent XR and a picture of my smile. This is still my temporary denture and they made some aesthetic adjustments to my next one. No one has noticed the difference at work or within my friend group that doesn't know I had this done.
Tl;dr : it was worth the pain and the money.