Podcast: Play in new window | Download | Embed

Subscribe: Android | Email | RSS

On this episode of My Fulfilled Life, we interview Dr. Wolfgang Pirker who is a special kind of dentist in Vienna, Austria. I discovered him on Youtube and was in awe of what he was doing.Turns out he is the only one in the world currently doing this. I built up the courage to reach out because maybe he was what I had been looking for.

Dr. Pirker is a myofascial surgeon where patients are typically referred to him through their general dentist. The difference between typical implants and bio-implant from Dr. Pirker is that your typical implant is a general implant that comes off the shelf. In which there is a big difference between a person’s tooth socket and the screw implant your dentist is about to place in the tooth. Your natural tooth can have 1 to three roots. The surgeon has to drill has to then drill healthy bones and fill in those voids or gaps with a bone substitute. My Bio-Implant solution is completely different. We create the implant according to the patient’s tooth socket. The implant matches the patient’s tooth perfectly not only in form, but also in color. It is an optimized copy of the natural tooth made out of ceramic (Zirconium) and not metal. It the world 1st truly anatomical dental implant that doesn’t require surgery. If you get a common screw. The surgeon will make you fit the screw by drilling and filling. We do it the other way around.

What caused him to come up with such an innovative way to perform implants is that he asked himself why do we drill a hole if a hole is already there? You just need an implant that fits the socket. Sometimes experts need to complicate things to justify their existence by making things more violent on the body and more complicated. If the tooth fits the socket, there is drilling and is the least evasive and this is the way you want to go.

Unfortunately, the dental and implant industry is not fond of this simplified solution turning things upside down. No one wants to have what he has done 50 years ago. It destroys the common way of performing dental implants.  The industry likes to sales the simple titanium screw for $200. Compare the technology behind creating this screw and the middle-class smart phone, but they are the same price. The experts make money on multiple and costly operations, this is what they are trained for and what they have learned. In the near future, any general dentist would be able to place an implant into the tooth socket. No more experts for drilling and filling are needed anymore. Whenever you need an expert in your life you can be sure it will be expensive, we all know dentistry, especially implants are very expensive. These are the reason why implantology has never gotten cheaper in the last 50 years. Just compare the development of the car, computer or any other technical product, whenever we create a technical solution the product becomes cheaper over time because it no longer needs to be handmade. In dentistry, the product is already produced by machines, but it is hand place by experts that require a lot of time and experience to do. This is what makes implants so expensive. When you create a technical solution, you eliminate a cheaper product without the risks and eliminate the requirement for experts. In this way, the implant can be placed by any family dentist within a few minutes. You can’t make the process cheaper as long as an expert is involved for over 1 hour.

From childhood, he realized being a surgeon is what he wanted to do he had this realization back in 2004 and has been pursuing this ever since. Whenever you do something new you are scared because you don’t want to harm the patient, but there wasn’t a huge risk. He was already eliminating the drill. If you place an implant, you 3 things to consider. You can’t really harm the jaw bone really in comparison to the heart or brain, there isn’t as much there. The second is there any threat in the implant itself, and this can’t be if the implant is titanium, zirconium or some other type of ceramic. The third, which is the way the implant is placed, whenever you need a drill or bone augment/substitute because you can harm the neighbor tooth, the nerve or sinus. Whenever you use bone substitute you can have an infection. If you take the bioimplant, we don’t drill or use bone substitutes. So most of the risk are gone. The only risk that you still have is that you might loose the implant and in that case, you end up with a tooth socket. In that case, you can redo the procedure in about 5 minutes with a lowered success rate of 50%, the 1st procedure has a 90% success rate.

He started with 8 patient and all 8 patients failed until he had the idea to change the surface of the tooth making it rougher, this is when he immediately had the 90% success rate. The rough surface is needed for osseointegration which refers to the bone actually grabbing the implant and growing to it. The last 10% of failure is when patients chew on the implant in the 1st phase of grown so it is important to wear the splint to guard against it.

Dr. Pirker also prefers this, instead of root canals. I have read a handful of books that feel the same way as you on this topic,  can you explain what the problem is to our listeners? Root canals are a desperate attempt to save the tooth from germs that have already invaded the tooth. The only way is to enclose the tooth so that they can’t get out of the tooth. A tooth is not a solid as you think, it has more of the structure of a sponge because of the dental tubular. The goal of a root canal is to block the channels of the root, but germs have a size of a millionth of a meter so it’s just a question of time for the germs to find a way out of the tooth and into the bone. The immune system reacts to the toxins that it gives off.  We know humans give off waste products and gas, so do germs. If you have a tight filling on the tooth, the way it gets out is through the bone. Patients feel this by pain or body sensation. When we say body sensation is when you notice the tooth. For example, you don’t feel your knee or shoulder until something is wrong, this is the same for your tooth.

Dr. Pirker’s  drive or motivation to continue practicing his method of implants is his patients and to make a much more simple and logical implant system, this is what drives him to continue.

Insurance is a little different in Europe than in America, given that Europeans can travel to different countries and be covered. However, implants are not covered. You have to have private insurance for that. In America, implants are covered depending on your insurance percentage, but if this needs to be on the top of your jaw additional procedures such as sinus lift are needed which are extra. It turns out to be cheaper to fly to Austria to get this procedure done than to stay here use insurance. Let alone the short amount of time to have this done along with healing time.

I’ve read that you have been treated patients for over 13 years with this method. He has studied 150 patients with a 90% success rate. Conventional implants can only treat 3-5% of all patients. So if 100 patients come in, they can only do 3-5 patients and have a 98% success rate. The bio implant can treat 30% of patients with a 90% success rate, which is much better since it is a wider range. A good example of this is post-its. The glue doesn’t glue anything except small pieces of paper. It won’t work for anything except for small pieces of paper and then you have a 99% success rate. Narrowing the field always presents better results of success.

The limits for this procedure where it cannot be used is where the tooth is rotten and the gum is receding and not securing the tooth. If there is no socket to place the tooth in because you have already lost the tooth, the root still has to be there.

The words of wisdom would you give to my listeners who want to pursue

their goal or dreams is never give up even if you are exhausted. Take some time off, rest, relax take it easy and start again. Success often times needs some luck. To be consistent is the base of any success.

How to Find Out More about Dr. Pirker and Bio-Implants

Facebook:BioImplant – Cad/Cam Dental Implant Research

Website: http://www.bioimplant.at

E: mail:

Phone: +43 1 512 24 00