Gordon from Christchurch — single Nobel Biocare dental implant fitted between rosters

Real patient story, shared with permission. This patient has consented to Picasso Dental Clinic publishing their experience to help other New Zealand patients. Treatment, material, NZD price, and timeline are accurate to the case archive. Reviewed by Dr. Tran Thanh Phong, Head of Implantology.

Gordon is a commercial pilot in his mid-fifties, based in Christchurch and away from home for big chunks of every month. An upper premolar that had carried an old crown for years finally failed on him — the root fractured underneath, and the tooth had to come out. He left the gap alone for a while, but it sat just far enough forward to show when he spoke, and in a job spent in front of crew and passengers that bothered him more than he expected.

A Christchurch private clinic quoted him around NZD 6,500 to replace it with a single implant. The price was not the sticking point so much as the calendar: implants need a healing pause between placement and the final crown, and threading that around a flying roster at home felt unworkable. A colleague who had treatment done in Vietnam between leave blocks suggested he look further afield. He sent us an enquiry. We returned a written, itemised NZD quote within 24 hours: 1 Nobel Biocare implant at NZD 2,667 per unit = NZD 2,667.

The brand question, settled early

Gordon is, by trade, a person who reads the specification before he trusts the machine. His first questions were not about price — they were about exactly which fixture would go into his jaw, who would place it, and what cover applied if anything went wrong years down the line.

The answer that settled him was that we use the same Nobel Biocare system he had been quoted at home, not a cheaper substitute. We sent the manufacturer warranty documentation in advance, along with confirmation that a Nobel Biocare implant crown carries a 10-year warranty with us. He also asked, sensibly, whether the premolar site had enough bone. From the panoramic X-ray his Christchurch dentist had emailed, the healed site looked clean and well-volumed — no graft anticipated — though we flagged that CBCT imaging on arrival would be the final word.

The two trips

Because the extraction site had healed before he travelled, Gordon’s case was uncomplicated and split neatly into two short visits with the healing window in between.

Trip 1 — placement (4 days)

Three-month healing window

Gordon flew back to Christchurch and went straight back on roster. The implant integrated with the bone — osseointegration — while he worked his normal blocks. We sent a check-in message at six weeks. Nobody on the flight deck was any the wiser, which he said was rather the point.

Trip 2 — the crown (3 days)

What it cost end-to-end

Against the Christchurch quote of around NZD 6,500 for the implant alone, the clinical figure of NZD 2,667 saved Gordon close to NZD 3,800 before travel — a saving against the local NZD 6,000–7,000 range of roughly NZD 3,300 to NZD 4,300 on the dental work itself. Even with two sets of return flights and accommodation folded in, his all-in total landed roughly level with what the single tooth would have cost him at home, with the difference being that he came back having also had two short trips to Vietnam.

“I fly for a living, so I know the airfare side is easier for me to wave away than it would be for most,” he noted in his survey. “But I ran the numbers as if I’d paid full fare both times, and it still stacked up.”

The thing he didn’t expect

From his survey: “I’d braced myself for the placement day to be the ordeal. It wasn’t — it was over before I’d properly tensed up. The part I hadn’t thought about was how strange it felt going three months with a healing cap in there and no crown. It didn’t hurt, it just felt like an unfinished job, and as a pilot an unfinished job nags at me. Once I understood that the waiting was the whole point, I stopped poking at it with my tongue and got on with the roster.”

What aftercare looked like back in Christchurch

Gordon had a routine check with his Christchurch dentist a couple of months after the crown went in. We sent a written aftercare summary and the implant passport — Nobel Biocare brand, lot number, and batch — so his local dentist could log exactly what had been placed. The occlusion was reviewed and the implant added to his file. His 12-month check came back clean, and he keeps the documentation filed the way he files everything: tidily, and where he can find it.

Gordon’s three pieces of advice

1. “Build the trips around leave you already control, not leave you’re hoping to get. The three-month gap is fixed, so I anchored each visit to a roster break I knew was mine. That removed all the stress from the timing.”
2. “Get the implant brand confirmed in writing before you commit. One short email confirming it was the same Nobel Biocare I’d been quoted at home did more for my confidence than any amount of marketing.”
3. “Don’t fight the healing window. I’m an impatient man and I wanted it finished on trip one. Accepting that the wait is doing the work — that’s what makes the result last.”

See also

• Single-tooth dental implants pillar — the protocol, brands, and NZD pricing for replacing one tooth.
• Implant aftercare — what Gordon was told for home maintenance.
• Christchurch to Vietnam dental travel page — local benchmark and route logistics.

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About this page

Medically reviewed by

Dr. Tran Thanh Phong

Head of Implantology, Picasso Dental Clinic

DDS · 25+ years in practice · 15,000+ implants placed · 1,000+ All-on-4 cases

Clinical focus: Implantology · All-on-4 · Zygomatic implants

Dr. Tran Thanh Phong has practised since 2001 and leads implantology across the Picasso group. He was the first Vietnamese dentist to perform All-on-4 immediate loading (2010), placed over 15,000 implants across his career at roughly 600 per year, and has completed 400+ zygomatic implant cases since 2017. Loma Linda University-trained (2010). Clinical representative for Nobel Biocare in Vietnam since 2007.

Last clinically reviewed

28 May 2026

Published by

Picasso Dental Clinic

Review policy

Every medical procedure page on this site is reviewed by a named Picasso clinician before publication and re-checked when pricing, materials, or protocols change. Source documents are linked at the bottom of each page.