What Periodontal Treatment and Dental Implants Cost

For how claims are filed, payment is taken, and monthly plans work, see Insurance and financing and Does insurance cover periodontal treatment and implants?. This page is about the fee itself and what moves it.

Why There Are No Prices on This Page

Austin Periodontal Associates does not publish fees, and the reason is not evasiveness. Periodontal surgery is priced by what is actually done: which teeth, how many sites, how much bone has to be rebuilt, what materials go in, and how long you are in the chair. Those things are not knowable from a phone call. A practice that quotes a number over the phone is either quoting the simplest possible version of your case, or quoting a range so wide it tells you nothing.

What this office does instead is measure first and quote second. After the exam and imaging, you leave the consultation with a written plan, itemized by procedure, with the sequence and the fee for each step. That estimate is the document that governs your treatment.

What Drives the Cost of Gum Disease Treatment?

Periodontitis is staged and graded, and the treatment follows the stage. The variables are:

• How much of the mouth is involved. Treatment is quoted by quadrant or by area, not by mouth. Two quadrants cost less than four.
• Whether it can be treated without surgery. Scaling and root planing under local anesthetic handles early and moderate disease. Deep pockets that remain after that need surgical access, which is a separate, larger procedure.
• Whether bone is being regenerated. Rebuilding lost bone around a tooth adds graft material and a membrane at each site treated, and each of those is its own line.
• How many teeth need it. A regenerative procedure on one molar and the same procedure on six teeth are not the same fee.
• Maintenance afterward. Treated periodontitis is usually maintained with cleanings below the gumline every three to four months, commonly alternating between this office and your general dentist. That is an ongoing cost, not a one-time one, and it is the cheapest part of the whole arrangement.

The CDC reports that nearly half, 42 percent, of adults aged 30 years and older have periodontitis, and that severe periodontitis affects about 8 percent of adults, from national survey data collected between 2009 and 2014. Most of it is treated non-surgically. More on the procedures themselves: gum disease treatment.

What Drives the Cost of a Gum Graft?

Grafting is estimated per tooth or per surgical area, so the count matters more than anything else. Beyond the count:

• Whether the teeth are next to each other. Four adjacent teeth can often be treated through one tunneled approach in one sitting. Four teeth scattered across the mouth are separate surgical sites.
• Your own tissue or processed donor tissue. Tissue from your palate has no material fee but creates a second surgical site. Processed donor tissue avoids the palate and carries a material cost per site.
• How much root is exposed. Deeper recession usually needs a conventional approach rather than tunneling, which takes longer.
• Whether anything else is being corrected at the same time, such as a frenum pulling on the gumline.

Details of the techniques are on the gum grafting page.

What Drives the Cost of a Single Implant?

An implant is not one fee. It is a sequence, and how long that sequence is depends on what is in the site now.

• Is there still a tooth there? An extraction is a separate procedure from the implant.
• Does the socket need preserving? Grafting an extraction site at the time of removal is an added fee that frequently prevents a much larger graft later.
• Is there enough bone? If not, see the grafting section below.
• What do you wear while it heals? A removable temporary tooth, a retainer with a tooth on it, or a bonded temporary are different fees, and some patients in back-tooth sites wear nothing.
• Sedation. Local anesthetic alone, nitrous oxide, oral sedation, or IV sedation. Sedation is quoted by the time it is administered.
• Soft tissue around the implant. Thin gum over an implant sometimes needs thickening, which is a graft, quoted separately.
• The final crown, which your general dentist makes and estimates on their own schedule.

Every one of those is a separate line on your estimate, so the essential items and the optional ones are visible as such. See dental implants and what dental implants cost.

What Drives the Cost of Bone Grafting and a Sinus Lift?

Bone grafting is priced by how much bone has to be built and how it has to be built.

• Volume and technique. Filling a fresh socket is a small procedure. Rebuilding the width or height of a ridge that has been missing teeth for years is a larger one, sometimes needing a membrane, fixation, and a block of bone rather than particles.
• Graft material. Processed human, bovine, or synthetic materials are priced differently per unit, and the number of units depends on the defect.
• Sinus lift technique. A crestal lift is done through the implant site itself when only a few millimeters are needed, and the implant often goes in the same day. A lateral lift opens a window in the side of the jaw, adds considerably more graft, and the implant follows four to six months later. The cone-beam CT determines which one your anatomy allows; it is not a preference.
• One surgery or two. When the implant can be placed at the same appointment as the graft, you pay for one surgical visit and one round of sedation instead of two.

What Drives the Cost of Full-Arch Treatment?

Replacing a whole arch of teeth is quoted per arch, and it is the widest range in periodontics because the starting points differ so much.

• How many implants support the arch, which depends on bone volume, bite forces, and whether the opposing arch is natural teeth or a denture.
• Whether failing teeth must come out first, and how many.
• Whether the ridge has to be reduced or built up to make room for the prosthesis and to give the implants bone to sit in.
• Whether you leave with teeth the same day. An immediate provisional arch is an added laboratory and surgical cost. Healing with a conventional denture over the implants costs less up front and asks more of you during healing.
• The final prosthesis. Materials differ substantially in cost, and the final teeth are fabricated and billed through the restoring dentist and laboratory, not this office.
• Sedation, which for full-arch surgery is usually IV and usually long.

The American Academy of Periodontology publishes patient information on implant treatment and on what a periodontist is, including the three years of training beyond dental school the specialty requires, which is useful background before comparing plans.

What Is in a Written Estimate?

Every consultation ends with one. It lists:

1. Each procedure by name and by its American Dental Association CDT code, the same code your insurance company reads.
2. The fee for that procedure.
3. The sequence, which visit each item belongs to, and roughly how far apart the visits fall.
4. The expected insurance portion, once your benefits have been verified, and your expected share.
5. What is not included, specifically the restorative work your general dentist performs.

If findings change once surgery is underway, the plan is revised and reviewed with you before treatment continues, rather than appearing later on a bill.

What Is Bundled and What Is Separate?

Bundled into the surgical fee: the surgery itself and the routine post-operative visits and suture removal that belong to it.

Quoted separately: the consultation and imaging, sedation, graft materials and membranes, any temporary tooth, soft tissue grafting done around an implant, and periodontal maintenance visits afterward.

Billed by another office entirely: crowns, bridges, dentures, and full-arch prostheses. That division surprises people, so it is stated plainly at the consultation, and Dr. Verrett coordinates with your dentist so you see the complete picture rather than half of it.

How Does Staging Affect the Total?

Sequencing changes what you pay in a given year and sometimes what you pay overall.

• Combining procedures reduces cost. An extraction, a socket graft, and a frenectomy done in one sitting means one visit and one round of sedation instead of three.
• Splitting across benefit years does not reduce the fee, but it changes your share, because a second year brings a second annual maximum. Larger plans are often sequenced deliberately for this reason.
• Healing time is unavoidable and free. Bone commonly takes four to six months to mature around a graft. Nothing is charged for waiting, but the waiting spaces out the payments.
• Delay has a price of its own. Bone that is not preserved at the time of an extraction continues to shrink, and rebuilding it later is a larger procedure than preventing the loss would have been.

What Happens If You Only Do Part of the Plan?

Partial treatment is a legitimate choice and a common one. It is better made with the consequences stated:

• Active periodontitis that is treated in two quadrants and left in the other two continues in the untreated ones, which leaves active disease in the same mouth as the treated sites.
• Recession that is not treated tends to progress. The systematic review and meta-analysis by Chambrone and Tatakis in the Journal of Periodontology found that untreated recession defects in people with good oral hygiene have a high probability of progressing over long-term follow-up, and a root that is exposed further is harder to cover later.
• An extraction without socket preservation usually means a ridge graft before an implant can go in, which costs more than the socket graft would have.
• An implant without the planned soft tissue graft can still work well; the tissue around it is more likely to need attention later.

Treatment is prioritized by urgency at the consultation: infection and teeth at risk first, function second, appearance last. Ask which items are time-sensitive and which can wait a year. That question gets a straight answer here.

Can an HSA or FSA Pay for Periodontal Treatment?

Yes. Treatment of periodontal disease, bone and soft tissue grafting, implants that replace missing teeth, and sedation administered as part of that care are medical expenses under IRS rules, and can be paid from a health savings account or a flexible spending account. Purely cosmetic procedures are not eligible. Keep your itemized receipt; the front desk provides one with the procedure codes your plan administrator will want.

What Should You Ask Anyone Who Quotes You a Number?

1. What exactly does this number include, line by line?
2. Who performs the surgery, and what is their specialty training and board certification?
3. Is three-dimensional imaging part of the planning, and is it included?
4. Is grafting included, or added later if it turns out to be needed?
5. Is sedation included, and at what level?
6. Who makes the final tooth, what does that cost, and is it in this number?
7. How many visits, over how long?
8. What is the plan, and the cost, if something does not heal as expected?
9. Who maintains the result afterward, and how often?

A quote that cannot survive those nine questions is not a quote. It is a starting point for a conversation you have not had yet.

How to Get a Real Number

Schedule a consultation. It takes about an hour at the office in North Austin, includes the periodontal exam and any imaging the case needs, and ends with the written plan and estimate in your hand and your benefits verified. Nothing is done to your mouth that day, and nothing is scheduled until you have read what it costs.

What happens at your first visit · Contact the office · (512) 346-6097

Cost and insurance information on this page is general. Your written estimate is the document that governs your treatment.