Manaia from Kaikohe — single Neodent implant after a building-site accident

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.

Manaia is in his late 30s, a builder based in Kaikohe. He did not lose the tooth slowly to decay — a length of framing timber kicked back on site and caught him square in the mouth. One front-of-mouth tooth cracked below the gum and could not be saved. He carried on with the gap for a few weeks, because on a job you carry on, but it sat right where clients could see it and he is on his feet talking to people all day.

A Kaikohe private clinic had quoted him in the NZD 6,000-7,000 range to replace the single tooth with an implant. He sat on it. He sent us four phone photos and a panoramic X-ray from his GP referral, and we returned a written, itemised NZD quote within 24 hours: 1 Neodent implant at NZD 2,000 per unit = NZD 2,000, covering the fixture, abutment, and crown.

The brand and healing question

Manaia is practical with money and suspicious of anything that sounds too cheap. His questions were blunt: is the work any good, what happens if it fails, and does the saving survive once you add flights and time off the tools.

Neodent is part of the Straumann Group, with a strong clinical record at a mid-tier price. We pointed him to our implant brand transparency page so he could read the warranty terms himself: the Neodent single-implant crown carries a 5-year Picasso clinical warranty, and we supply the implant passport so any Kaikohe dentist can verify the fixture later.

The healing was the part he had not understood. A single front-tooth implant is usually two trips, not one — placement first, then around three months for the implant to fuse to the bone, then the crown. We were straight with him that we could not rush it, and he liked that we did not pretend it was a quick in-and-out. Because the bone around the socket was healthy and only the crown and root had taken the hit, he was a clean candidate with no graft needed.

The two trips

Trip 1 — placement (4 days)

Three-month healing window

He returned home and went back on the tools. We sent a remote check-in at six weeks. His local dentist eyeballed the healing cap at a routine visit and signed it off.

Trip 2 — final crown (4 days)

What it cost end-to-end

Against the Kaikohe quote of NZD 6,000-7,000 — for the clinical work alone — the maths still came out ahead. The clinical saving was around NZD 4,000-5,000, and even after two return trips from up north, transfers, and accommodation, Manaia landed roughly level with or below the midpoint of the local quote. He treated the second trip as the first proper holiday he had taken in two years, which he counted as a bonus rather than a cost.

The thing he didn’t expect

From his survey: “I’d braced for the placement day to hurt. It didn’t really — a bit of pressure and it was over before I’d settled into the chair. What caught me off guard was how dead the gap felt for the three months in between. I kept poking the healing cap with my tongue out of habit. Once the real tooth went in, that stopped overnight and I forgot it was even an implant.”

Aftercare back in Kaikohe

Manaia had a routine check with his Kaikohe dentist a couple of months after the crown went in. We sent a written aftercare summary and the implant passport — Neodent brand, lot, and batch — which his dentist added to the file. He was told to treat it like a normal tooth: brush, floss around it, and not use it to open anything on site.

His 12-month review with the local dentist came back clean, with the next check booked at 24 months.

Manaia’s three pieces of advice

1. “Get your local quote in writing first. It’s the one number that tells you if the trip is worth it. Mine made it an easy call.”
2. “Don’t sit on it after an accident. The bone shrinks while the gap’s empty, so getting in sooner gave me more to work with and no need for a graft.”
3. “Plan the wait, don’t fight it. It’s two trips with a few months between. I booked my time off the tools around it and made the second trip a real break.”

See also

• Single-tooth implants — the protocol, brands, and NZD pricing.
• Implant aftercare — what Manaia was told for home maintenance.
• Kaikohe (regional) 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.