Scott from Invercargill — single Osstem dental implant

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.

Scott is in his late forties, an electrician in Invercargill. He had lost an upper premolar to a root fracture a couple of years back and kept telling himself he would deal with it “next year”. The gap was far enough back that he could half-hide it, but he was conscious of it whenever he laughed at close quarters, and food kept packing into the empty socket. What finally moved him was a fortnight in Da Nang already on the calendar — if he was going to be on a beach for two weeks anyway, he reasoned, he might as well fill the gap while he was there.

An Invercargill private clinic had quoted him between NZD 6,000 and 7,000 for a single implant with a crown — call it NZD 6,500 at the midpoint. That number is exactly why “next year” had kept rolling forward. We returned a written, itemised NZD quote within 24 hours: 1 Osstem implant at NZD 1,667 per unit = NZD 1,667.

The brand and the healing question

Scott is not one to leap on faith. Before he committed he emailed a short list: which implant brand, what warranty, and what happened if something went wrong once he was home. We told him the fixture would be an Osstem implant — a Korean system we place routinely — carrying a 5-year clinical warranty on the crown, with an implant passport supplied so any Invercargill dentist could read the brand and lot number off the file.

His other worry was bone. A premolar lost two years earlier can mean the ridge has shrunk, and he had read enough to know a graft can add cost and time. We could not promise anything from photographs, so we flagged that a CBCT scan on arrival would settle it. As it turned out his site had held its volume well, and no graft was needed.

The two trips

Trip 1 — placement (paired with the holiday)

Healing window

He flew home and carried on as usual. We sent a remote check-in at six weeks and again at three months. The implant needs three to four months to fuse with the bone before the crown goes on, so the permanent restoration waited for a second visit.

Trip 2 — crown (short visit)

What it cost end-to-end

Against the Invercargill quote of NZD 6,000-7,000, the clinical work alone — NZD 1,667 — was roughly a quarter of the local price, a saving of about NZD 4,833 on the midpoint before any travel. Even loading in flights, a hotel for the crown trip, food, and insurance, Scott still came out ahead of the lowest end of the local range. And the first trip’s airfares and beach days were a holiday he had already paid for, so in his ledger only the second trip really counted as a cost of getting the tooth fixed.

The thing he didn’t expect

From his survey: “I had built this up in my head for years and braced for a slow, fiddly process that would eat my holiday. The placement took less time than the consultation before it, and I was out at the markets that night. The part that actually surprised me was the colour of the finished crown — I expected something obviously fake and I genuinely can’t pick it out from my own teeth in the mirror.”

Aftercare back in Invercargill

Scott had a routine check at his Invercargill dentist about two months after the crown was fitted. We sent a written aftercare summary along with the implant passport — Osstem brand, lot number, fixture type — and his dentist reviewed the bite and added the implant to his file. His 12-month review back home came up clean, with a 24-month check booked.

Scott’s three pieces of advice

1. “Hang the dental work off a trip you’ve already booked. I didn’t add a holiday to get a tooth fixed — I added a tooth to a holiday I was taking anyway. That made the whole cost a lot easier to swallow.”
2. “Ask for the warranty and the implant passport in writing before you go. Knowing the Osstem crown had a five-year warranty turned a vague worry into a known quantity, and my Kiwi dentist wanted the lot number at the first check-up.”
3. “Don’t overthink a single tooth. I sat on it for two years. The reality was one short appointment, a few months of healing, and a crown on a quick second visit.”

See also

• Single-tooth implant guide — the process, brands, and NZD pricing for one missing tooth.
• Implant aftercare — what Scott was told for home maintenance.
• Invercargill 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.