Phat from Wellington — 2 Straumann dental implants

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.

Phat had two failing teeth on the same side — an upper premolar that had cracked under an old filling and a neighbouring tooth his previous dentist had already flagged as not worth saving. As an accountant, he’d run the numbers more than once. A Wellington private clinic had quoted him around NZD 13,000 to replace both with implants, and the figure kept stalling the decision. What finally moved him was a practical realisation: he had a block of annual leave coming up, and he’d rather spend it healing somewhere warm than sitting on a problem for another year.

We returned a written, itemised NZD quote within 24 hours: 2 Straumann implants at NZD 2,667 per tooth = NZD 5,334 total (placement, abutment, and crown on each), at the May 2026 Picasso price list with the exchange rate fixed at 1 NZD = 15,000 VND. That was well under half the Wellington figure for the same two teeth.

Because the two implants sat side by side, Phat’s main question was about doing them together rather than one at a time. He wanted to know whether placing both posts in a single visit was sensible or whether he was rushing it. Dr. Tran Thanh Phong, our Head of Implantology, reviewed his panoramic X-ray and CBCT scan before anything was booked. The bone at both sites was sound, the gap between them was clean, and the plan was straightforward: place both posts in the first trip, let them integrate at home, then return for the two crowns. One healing window, not two.

The trip

Phat split the work across two trips and built each one around leave he already had. Here’s how the timeline actually ran.

What it cost end-to-end

The clinical figure was fixed. Travel was the part Phat managed himself, and as you’d expect from an accountant, he managed it tightly.

Against the Wellington quote of about NZD 13,000 for the two implants alone, Phat’s clinical cost was NZD 5,334 — a clinical saving of roughly NZD 7,666. Even after flights, hotels, food, and insurance across both trips, his all-in spend of about NZD 10,584 still came in below the original quote for the dentistry on its own, and it bought him two trips to Vietnam in the bargain.

The thing he didn’t expect

“I’d assumed two implants would mean twice the recovery and twice the fuss,” Phat said in the post-trip survey. “It didn’t. Because they went in together, I had one sore weekend, not two, and by the time I was back at my desk I’d basically forgotten about it. The part I hadn’t planned for was how detailed the costing was — every line item was there in writing before I paid a cent, which is the first thing I check in my own job.”

Aftercare back in Wellington

Before he flew home after the second trip, we handed Phat his implant passport — the Straumann lot numbers for both posts, the placement and crown records, and the review schedule — to pass to his Wellington dentist. We asked him to book a check and clean at six months and again at twelve. His NZ dentist was happy to monitor both implants during routine visits, which is exactly how shared aftercare is meant to work.

Phat’s three pieces of advice

1. “If you’ve got two teeth going at once, ask whether they can be placed together. One healing window saved me a whole extra trip’s worth of recovery.”
2. “Treat the quote like any other contract — get every line in writing first. Picasso did that without me having to push, and it made the decision easy.”
3. “Build the trips around leave you already have. I wasn’t taking extra time off; I was just spending it somewhere I’d want to be anyway.”

See also

• Dental implants — the full procedure, brands, and pricing
• Implant aftercare — how to look after your implants for the long term
• Wellington → Vietnam dental travel — flights, timing, and planning from Wellington
• Request your own free NZD multiple implants 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.