Warranties and guarantees are provided for many items and services today, including cars. You may wonder why dental treatments are not guaranteed in the same way.

A number of answers are generally given for this. It is a medical treatment. Everyone’s case is different. Every person’s body is different. No two treatments are identical. A guarantee cannot be provided.

We don’t share these views.

We believe a dental treatment can be guaranteed with some sensible restrictions in place. It provides peace of mind for the patient and we are also able to encourage people to maintain better oral hygiene and visit us for more frequent check-ups in order to adhere to the warranty provided. Thus, it benefits both the patient and the practice.

Two types of guarantees

We provide two types of guarantees for our patients.

Material and mechanical guarantee

• We provide a 99 year guarantee on all the material we use that forms the base or structure of any dental restoration. If you lose any of your restoration owing to faulty materials or broken or cracked instruments in the base structure, we will replace your restoration free of charge to you. We won’t charge for the materials or for the work performed by the technicians. You will still be required to pay for the dentist’s fees and staff fees. This guarantee covers dental implants, implant abutments, crown, bridge and denture metal framework. This does not include porcelain crowns or bridge units.

Treatment guarantee

• A treatment guarantee is rarely offered in dentistry today. Many practices offer a material guarantee but they do not provide a warranty on the treatment they carry out. We are different. We are confident the quality of the work we undertake is outstanding, thus we are confident enough to provide a guarantee not only on our materials but also on our treatments.
• The treatment warranty does include our work. If any of your restoration fails for no particular reason in the guaranteed time and you maintained a good oral hygiene, visited us for regular check-ups and the failure is not your own fault, we will replace your restoration free of charge. For full terms please visit our Treatment Warranty Terms webpage.

By offering a true treatment guarantee we are raising the standards in dentistry. We encourage other surgeries to join in our intention to provide an outstanding practice for our patients.

Don’t be misled by lifetime warranties

This is a highly important issue. Some practices offer what is termed a “lifetime” warranty. This will mislead patients who assume they will receive the type of guarantee they get on their cars, washing machines or other items.

A lifetime warranty is mostly only referring to the dental instruments and only if they have a structural failure. For example if you lose your implant the so called “lifetime” guarantee will not cover the required replacement. If the implant were to break or crack and this causes the loss of the implant, then it would be covered under the guarantee. Structural failure is a very minor part of implant failures, so offering this is almost the same as offering the patient no guarantee at all.

In the case that your warranty will be granted, the most likely outcome is that you would not have to pay for the cost of the implant material. However, the dentist’s fee and practice costs will be charged along with all the other materials used that are not related to the implant.

You are right to be suspicious of practices that state their lifetime warranty will cover the whole restoration of the full implant treatment. Many implants do fail within ten to thirty years of having them fitted. However some practices offering a full lifetime warranty may not plan to grant that warranty at all. If they do they may not plan to complete a high quality job.