Joanne from Tauranga — single Straumann dental implant during a beach holiday

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.

Joanne is a manager in her fifties from Tauranga. One of her upper premolars had been failing slowly — a root fracture that no longer responded to repair — and her previous dentist had told her plainly it needed to come out and be replaced. She is not someone who puts off decisions, but this one stalled on cost. A Tauranga private clinic had quoted her around NZD 6,500 for the implant, abutment, and crown together. The folder sat on her kitchen bench for the better part of a year.

We returned a written, itemised NZD quote within 24 hours: 1 Straumann implant at NZD 2,667 per tooth = NZD 2,667, covering the fixture, abutment, and final crown.

The brand question, and the bone question

Joanne treated the decision like a work brief. She wanted to know exactly who would place the implant, which system they would use, and what happened if something failed years down the track. She had read enough to know that “implant” can mean very different things depending on the fixture, so she asked specifically about the brand tier.

We confirmed she would receive a Straumann implant — a Swiss system she could research independently — and that the implant crown carries a 10-year clinical warranty, which we put in writing before she booked anything. From the OPG she sent, the bone height at the premolar site looked adequate, but we told her that final confirmation needed a CBCT scan on arrival. The clarity, more than the headline price, was what made her say yes.

The trip

Joanne built the visit around the part she actually wanted — time by the water — and slotted the dentistry into it. Placement happened on her first trip; the crown was fitted on a shorter second visit after the implant had healed at home.

Trip 1 — placement (6 days)

Healing window at home

Joanne returned to Tauranga and carried on with work. We sent a remote check-in at six weeks and again at three months. Her local dentist had a look at the healing site at one of her routine visits and was happy with it.

Trip 2 — final crown (4 days)

What it cost end-to-end

Against the NZD 6,500 she had been quoted at the Tauranga private clinic, the clinical cost alone of NZD 2,667 was a saving of roughly NZD 3,800. Once two return flights, accommodation, food, and insurance were added, the all-in figure of NZD 7,537 sat a little above the bare NZ quote — but Joanne had wanted the beach holiday regardless, and she counted the trip itself as value she would have paid for anyway. The implant carried a Straumann fixture and a 10-year crown warranty, neither of which was on the table at home for the price.

The thing she didn’t expect

From her survey: “I had braced myself for the extraction day for months. It was the bit I dreaded most and it was over before I’d finished worrying about it. What genuinely caught me off guard was how much of the trip had nothing to do with my teeth — I’d planned everything around appointments and ended up with these long, unhurried afternoons by the water that I hadn’t given myself in years.”

Aftercare back in Tauranga

Joanne saw her own dentist in Tauranga for a routine check a couple of months after the crown went in. We had sent a written aftercare summary and the implant passport — brand, lot, and batch number — so the implant could be added to her file and verified by anyone treating her in future. Her 12-month review back home was clean, and the implant is on her normal recall schedule like any other tooth.

Joanne’s three pieces of advice

1. “Get the warranty in writing before you pay a cent. I had the 10-year term on the crown in an email before I booked a flight, and that document did more for my nerves than any amount of reassurance.”
2. “Do the maths against your actual home quote, not a rumour you heard at a barbecue. I nearly talked myself out of it on vague numbers — the real comparison was the one that made sense.”
3. “Book it somewhere you’d happily spend a week even without a dentist in the picture. The beach was the point as much as the tooth was, and that’s exactly why I came home feeling sorted instead of stressed.”

See also

• Single-tooth implant pillar — the procedure, the brands we place, and NZD pricing.
• Implant aftercare — what Joanne was told for home maintenance.
• Tauranga to Vietnam dental travel page — local benchmark, flights, and timing around a holiday.

Request your own free NZD dental implant quote

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.