Peri-Implantitis — Infection Around Dental Implants

The earliest sign of infection around a dental implant is gum that bleeds when brushed or probed, sometimes with redness, swelling, tenderness or pus.

Common symptoms to watch for are bleeding gums around the implant, redness or swelling, tenderness, a bad taste or discharge of pus, and gum recession that starts to expose part of the implant. Pain is often absent in the early stages, which is part of why the problem can advance quietly, and an implant that feels loose is a late, more serious warning rather than an early one. Clinicians confirm and stage the condition using two checks: gentle probing for bleeding and pocket depth, and an X-ray showing whether the bone level has dropped from the baseline recorded when the implant was fitted. Bleeding with no bone loss points to mucositis, while bleeding or pus with a deeper pocket and bone loss confirms peri-implantitis. Severity is then graded mainly by how much supporting bone has gone: early cases involve limited bone loss and shallower pockets, moderate cases involve more, and advanced cases involve deeper pockets with extensive bone loss. That grading matters because it steers which treatment is appropriate. If an implant already feels loose or painful, it is worth reading about alongside recognising the signs that your implant may be failing, because not every symptom means the same thing.

Peri-implantitis treatment starts with thorough professional cleaning of the implant surface, and moves on to surgery when bone loss is more advanced.

The aim at every stage is to disrupt and remove the bacterial biofilm from the implant surface, because that biofilm is what drives the infection. For the early mucositis stage, non-surgical cleaning by a dentist or hygienist combined with better home care is often enough to settle the inflammation completely. For established peri-implantitis the picture is more involved. Non-surgical cleaning alone removes surface bacteria but cannot rebuild a bony defect, so it is frequently a first step rather than the whole answer. Dentists may add measures such as air-polishing, laser or photodynamic therapy (light-activated disinfection), and occasionally antibiotics, though the evidence for these add-ons is mixed and no single combination is proven best. When bone loss is more significant, surgical treatment opens the gum to clean the implant thoroughly and then either reshapes the bone and implant surface (resective surgery) or attempts to rebuild lost bone with grafting (regenerative surgery). What this involves for the patient depends on severity: milder cases often need just a course of professional cleaning and a review, while surgical treatment is a planned procedure carried out under local anaesthetic, followed by a healing period and closer monitoring afterwards. Your dentist will explain the specific plan before anything goes ahead. At Deepcar Dental Care, assessment and management are handled in-house by Dr Ibraheem Ijaz, with maxillofacial support from Mr Mohammed Anabtawi for the most complex cases, so patients are not routinely sent elsewhere. Dr Ijaz's approach is to take responsibility for the whole course of care, from identifying a problem early to managing it through to a stable result.