Tane from Whangarei — single Osstem dental implant for a knocked-out front tooth

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.

Tane is a Whangarei truck driver in his late thirties, married with two kids in rugby boots. He lost an upper front tooth in a sideline collision at his son’s game — a clash of heads on the touchline and the tooth was gone before he hit the grass. His previous dentist confirmed the root had fractured below the gumline and could not be saved, so it was extracted, leaving a clean gap right at the front where everyone could see it. A Whangarei private clinic later worked up a single-implant plan and quoted him between NZD 6,000 and 7,000, around NZD 6,500 once the surgery, the post and the porcelain were all added in. He sent us a panoramic X-ray and four smile photos. We returned a written, itemised NZD quote within 24 hours: 1 Osstem implant at NZD 1,667 per tooth = NZD 1,667.

The brand and healing conversation

Tane’s first question was blunt and the right one: what implant were we actually putting in, and who would place it. We use Osstem, a Korean titanium system used worldwide, and Dr. Tran Thanh Phong’s implant team reviewed his X-ray before we quoted. The gap was almost a year old by the time he contacted us, which actually helped — the extraction socket had fully healed and the front bone was sound, so no graft was flagged from the imaging. We were upfront that a CBCT scan on arrival would confirm the bone volume before any surgery, and that a front tooth carries one extra demand a back tooth does not: it has to look right, not just work.

The two trips

Trip 1 — placement (7 days)

Healing window

He flew home and went back to his Northland routes with the temporary tooth holding the space. The implant needs time to fuse with the bone before it can carry a permanent crown, so we left a healing window of a few months and ran remote check-ins along the way. His local dentist eyed the site at a routine visit and was happy.

Trip 2 — final crown (4 days)

What it cost end-to-end

The clinical figure of NZD 1,667 was close to what the Whangarei clinic had quoted for the crown alone. Against that NZD 6,000-7,000 local quote, the clinical saving was roughly NZD 4,800 — a whole tooth, root and all, for less than the home crown by itself. Once two return flights and accommodation were added, the all-in total landed near the bottom of the local quote, but with two things Tane valued: a brand-name implant he could name before he flew, and two trips he was able to fold into family time in Vietnam.

The thing he didn’t expect

From his survey: “I’d braced myself for the surgery and it was honestly the easy part — an hour, a bit of pressure, done. What I didn’t expect was the colour. I’d assumed a new front tooth would sit there too white and too perfect, the way a capped tooth looks on telly. They matched it to the faint coffee tint of my real teeth and even built in the same little crookedness. I couldn’t pick which tooth was the new one in the mirror, and my wife couldn’t either after staring at that gap for a year.”

What aftercare looked like back in Whangarei

He had a routine check at his Whangarei dentist a couple of months after the crown went in. We sent a written aftercare summary and the implant passport — the Osstem brand, lot, and batch — so the implant could be added to his file and verified by any future clinician. His 12-month review back home came back clean, with the crown holding its shade and bite. Outcomes vary, and we tell every patient that.

Tane’s three pieces of advice

1. “Ask exactly which implant brand they’re putting in and write it down. I knew it was Osstem before I booked, and that one fact settled most of my nerves.”
2. “Don’t try to force it into one trip. The bone needs months to fuse, so plan two visits. The waiting is the part that makes it last.”
3. “Take a clear photo of your good teeth in daylight before you go. It helped them nail the shade, and that new tooth disappearing into my smile mattered more to me than the saving did.”

See also

• Single tooth implant pillar — the protocol, brands, and NZD pricing.
• Implant aftercare — what Tane was told for home maintenance.
• Whangarei to Vietnam dental implants 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.