“You must know your mission and your vision. Only then can you be sure this concept is right for your future.”
Dr. Bankauskas on starting the All-on-4® treatment concept
Dr. Simonas Bankauskas operates a chain of 13 practices in Lithuania and London, UK. In this interview, he explains how the All-on-4® treatment concept benefitted his patients and practices, and offers advice to clinicians looking to start this concept.
An implantology leader in Lithuania with an innovative and modern approach to dentistry, Dr. Simonas Bankauskas operates a chain of 13 private practices located across Lithuania and London, UK. In this interview, he explains how the All-on-4® treatment concept has benefitted his practices’ patients and offers advice for clinicians who are looking to offer this treatment concept.
Dr. Bankauskas, please give us a short summary of your professional development, and your practice today.
I graduated from Kaunas Medical University in 2006, and after university, I had little money left but big decisions to take. Examining my options, I saw implantology as my best potential for the future.
I started out at a course run by Nobel Biocare and it ended up being perhaps the best investment I’ve ever made – it was the right course, the right product, and the right approach for practice growth.
That’s when I started going to more courses and events, including the Nobel Biocare Global Symposium, to see what I could do best. I found that specialists were using a lot of approaches that weren’t yet implemented in Lithuania, like the All-on-4® treatment concept, immediate implant placement and NobelZygoma.
Introducing options such as these really drove our business’ growth.
What advice would you give to a young dentist interested in the All-on-4® treatment concept?
You must have a vision and a mission for what you want to achieve in dentistry. Progressing your career with full-arch implant treatment takes time and resources, so do your research to reaffirm that it’s the direction you want to take.
How would you describe your own mission or vision?
When I took on my own business, my mission was to create dental clinics that create the most comfortable and satisfying patient experience possible delivered by expert dentists. To be the best, I realized, it’s not enough to just place the most implants – you need to have optimized procedures and deliver unmatched service.
When I first started placing implants, conventional procedures that I saw being delivered in my region were very traumatic and took a long time. After extraction, you had to wait for months to perform augmentation and then wait again to actually put any implants into the patient’s mouth. For edentulous patients, this was a long, tiresome experience.
As I learned more about the All-on-4® treatment concept and had more training, the more implants we placed with this concept and the more successful my practices became. I built good relationships and a lot of trust with many patients, but as the practices grew so much, it was important for patients to come to our practices not to see me specifically, but to have the best experience possible with the All-on-4® treatment concept.
This required training for everyone in the practices in terms of protocols, safety, quality control and so on, but has now resulted in patients coming to us because of what our practices can do for them.
This is how you can attract and retain new patients, in my opinion. When they measure the experience against other clinics, you should stand out from the rest.
And what makes your practices stand out?
In the beginning, a key driver for us was that we offered the All-on-4® treatment concept, but this has become more common in recent years. However, not everyone is conducting it with immediate placement and function, with Multi-unit Abutments or NobelZygoma, and so these really help us stand out.
Another thing that we emphasize – something a dentist told me during a Nobel Biocare course, actually – is to approach each patient as a human being, and to consider what it would be like in his or her position. Consider the moral, health and financial aspects of treatment, and do what you can to optimize the patient experience throughout their dental journey.
What do you see as the key benefits of the All-on-4® treatment concept?
Patient comfort is an obvious benefit, since immediate placement and function means that they can live a relatively normal life faster than after traditional implant surgery. Of course, this improved efficiency works both ways – it can also benefit the clinician, who has to deal with fewer chairside appointments and no bone-grafting complications and fewer regenerative procedures.
The most expensive thing in life is your time, and so the more efficient you are, the more enriched you’ll be.
See a range of training courses and webinars on the All-on-4® treatment concept
Disclaimer: The views, clinical opinions expressed are the interviewees’ own and do not necessarily represent the ones of Nobel Biocare
More to explore
– Clinical case: Immediate Function with the All-on-4® treatment concept, Dr. Armando Lopes