Dr Costa Nikolopoulos and Dr. Petros Yuvanoglu, Speakers at Edentulism2023
Episode summary
Dr. Costa Nicolopoulos, an oral and maxillofacial surgeon, and Dr. Petros Yuvanoglu, a specialist prosthodontist, are a long-standing Athens- and Dubai-based team who preview their joint keynote, All-on-X from A to Z, at the Edentulism 2023 conference. They describe how, after decades of immediate-loading full-arch work begun in the 1990s, certain extreme atrophy cases exceeded what standard or tilted implants could achieve, leading them to adopt remote anchorage and zygomatic implants through the ZAGA platform pioneered by Carlos Aparicio. They identify two patient groups needing graftless treatment: those unwilling to spend a year on bone grafting and those whose grafts have already failed. They define full-arch success as patient aesthetics and function, an absence of surgical complications such as soft-tissue recession, peri-implantitis and chronic rhinosinusitis, and prosthodontic ease enabled by close surgeon-prosthodontist planning and immediate screw-retained teeth.
Key takeaways
- Dr. Costa Nicolopoulos is an oral and maxillofacial surgeon and Dr. Petros Yuvanoglu is a specialist prosthodontist trained at Tufts University (1998), practicing together in Athens and Dubai.
- Nicolopoulos performed his first immediate-loaded All-on-X case in 1994, placing five implants in the lower jaw and loading them the same day.
- The pair adopted zygomatic and other remote-anchorage implants via the ZAGA platform to treat extreme cases where standard or tilted implants were insufficient, crediting Carlos Aparicio.
- Two patient groups require graftless remote-anchorage treatment: those without time for a roughly one-year bone-grafting process, and those whose prior grafting has failed.
- The team delivers same-day teeth, often operating from early morning to late evening so patients leave with temporary fixed teeth within 24 hours.
- Their Edentulism 2023 lecture, All-on-X from A to Z, presents rules and 'smart concepts' (smart things with smart implants) to make full-arch outcomes predictable and reproducible and to prevent complications.
- They define success as patient aesthetics and function, avoidance of surgical complications (soft-tissue recession, peri-implantitis, chronic rhinosinusitis), and prosthodontic ease through immediate screw-retained restorations.
What you'll learn
- Why remote anchorage (zygomatic, pterygoid) is needed when standard or tilted implants fall short
- The two patient groups for graftless full-arch: those without time for grafting and those whose grafts have failed
- Immediate-loading, same-day-teeth protocols for full-arch rehabilitation
- Surgeon-prosthodontist teamwork and joint planning to place implants in restorable positions
- A three-part definition of All-on-X success: patient aesthetics/function, absence of surgical complications, and prosthodontic ease
About the guests
Dr. Costa Nicolopoulos
Dr. Costa Nicolopoulos is an oral and maxillofacial surgeon and zygomatic implant expert who has practiced in Greece for around 25 years and in Dubai for the last decade. He graduated cum laude in 1984 from the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, South Africa, and is the main surgeon at the ZAGA Centers in Athens (Nicolopoulos Implants, Glyfada) and Dubai. He performed his first immediate-loaded full-arch case in 1994 and specializes in treating severe maxillary atrophy with remote-anchorage and zygomatic implants under the ZAGA protocol.
Dr. Petros Yuvanoglu
Dr. Petros Yuvanoglu is a specialist prosthodontist who completed his three-year prosthodontics training at Tufts University in Boston in 1998 and has worked in private practice since 1999, focusing almost exclusively on prosthodontic rehabilitation with zygomatic implants. He is a partner at Nicolopoulos Implants in Athens and co-founder of SameDay Dental Implants, the first ZAGA Center in Dubai. He met Dr. Nicolopoulos at a conference in Rhodes in the late 1990s, beginning a decades-long surgeon-prosthodontist partnership in accelerated full-arch treatment.
