This case is very close to our hearts.
Shortly after opening the clinic, more than ten years ago, Alfonso and I, full of enthusiasm and desire, realized how difficult it was to make ourselves known to patients.
Alfonso came from Madrid after he had worked with his mentor in implantology in a prestigious clinic that had been in operation for many years. I decided to help him in this new stage, to achieve his dream of having his own dental clinic in Las Palmas, his city, in order to be able to be with his people, family, and friends.
As it was difficult to attract patients in a rented place, on a second floor, with no banners and no active patients, we spent days thinking about how we could make ourselves known. We came up with the idea of investing in an advertising campaign, in the media, press, and radio (at that time there were no social networks). As we had no money, we asked our parents for a loan, and we got down to work. We designed a press campaign to advertise a technique that professionals had not performed in Las Palmas until then: All-on-4, implants, and immediate loading to rehabilitate maxillae of patients without bone.
This publicity worked, and a patient who had read about it in the press called us from Fuerteventura. She was desperate because she got all her teeth removed, and a removable prosthesis was given to her, without giving her any other solution. We told her over the phone that what she had read in the advertisement was true, and that she could probably have implants and fixed teeth on the same day.
The next day, she took a plane and showed up at the office. Alfonso did a panoramic x-ray to see the initial state of the jaw and confirmed that his surgery could be performed and that the success rate was very high. It was a pity that she had not met us earlier, because we could have saved her from having to go through the undesirable experience of having to see herself without teeth and with a removable prosthesis.
She, a young and beautiful patient, could hardly believe it! She went to Fuerteventura and soon after she called us to know which day we could do the surgery and where she had to make the transfer. Furthermore, she was convinced, the doctor had given her security and she had nothing to lose. We were the only ones who had proposed something like this to her.
We told her that she would have to come a few days before to take measurements and to be able to make, together with the laboratory, the provisional screw-retained prosthesis that we would place in the afternoon on the same day of the surgery.
And so it was. The surgery was performed as planned, 4 implants were placed in the position planned by the doctor. In the end, measurements were taken to adapt the prosthesis to the definitive position of the implants, and to be able to screw in the afternoon the so longed for “fixed teeth”. Around 5 pm, the patient looked at herself in the mirror, and she could not believe it, she could not stop crying with emotion! She was so grateful and so happy that she had fixed her teeth. She could not understand how no one had ever proposed this technique to her before.
Today she is an important part of the Caballero de Rodas family. The relationship that is established with some patients is such that even today, every time she comes to the clinic for maintenance and check-ups, her eyes fill with tears of gratitude, and obviously, we are moved and proud that the love and desire with which we work, are recognized.
