Which implant do I have?

Where the answer usually is

In most cases you do not need to identify the implant from an X-ray, because someone already wrote it down. In order of how likely they are to have it:

• Your implant passport or patient card — many manufacturers supply one, with the system name, diameter, length and reference number, and often a peel-off barcode sticker.
• Your treating clinic's records. They are required to keep traceability information for implanted medical devices, and they can usually tell you within minutes.
• Your invoice or treatment plan, which frequently names the system.
• The surgical report, if you had treatment abroad and were given a discharge pack.

What we cannot do

We do not offer identification from a radiograph. Several systems look near-identical on a two-dimensional X-ray, and the consequence of a confident wrong answer is a clinician ordering a component that does not fit — or worse, one that appears to fit and does not seat correctly. That is a real clinical risk, not a theoretical one.

If we build image-based matching in future it will present ranked possibilities with their uncertainty stated, and it will not describe a match as an identification. A radiographic suggestion is not a substitute for professional confirmation against the physical components and your records.

If the records are genuinely lost

It happens, particularly with treatment carried out decades ago or by a practice that has since closed. A clinician can often narrow it down from the radiographic profile — thread pattern, neck geometry and connection shape are reasonably distinctive between families — and confirm it by unscrewing the restoration and inspecting the connection directly.

Our legacy systems reference exists for exactly this situation, and our connections reference may help you follow the conversation.