The Handover to Your French Home DentistRecords, Responsibilities, Continuity

The premise

Surgery and final bridge fitting happen in Hyderabad. Maintenance, hygiene, and any emergency work between India visits happen with your home dentist in Paris, Lyon, Marseille, Bordeaux, Toulouse, Nantes, Nice, Strasbourg, or wherever you live in France. That handover, from the team who placed your implants and fitted your zirconia to the French dentist who will clean around them twice a year for the next thirty, is where a good international case either holds up or falls apart.

This page is what we send to your French home dentist, what we give you to give them, and what we do behind the scenes to make the handover seamless. It is also what you should expect to receive so that you can verify it is actually happening.

The three documents your French home dentist needs

At the end of your second Hyderabad visit (the final-bridge visit), you leave with three specific deliverables:

1. The Clinical Summary (PDF)

A 12–18 page document prepared by your treating clinician, covering:

• Patient identification and medical history (redacted of PII for third-party sharing).
• Pre-treatment diagnostic findings: OPG, CBCT report, intraoral photographs, bite analysis, periodontal charting, shade selection.
• Treatment plan as agreed: each phase, each tooth/implant position, each material used.
• Implant specification: manufacturer (Straumann or Nobel Biocare), model, diameter, length, site, torque achieved at placement, date placed, surgeon.
• Prosthetic specification: bridge material (monolithic zirconia, layered zirconia, or e.max), shade, occlusal scheme, retention mechanism (screw-retained or cemented), access-hole positions.
• Surgical notes: any bone grafting performed, sinus lifts, nerve lateralisation, flap design, suture material.
• Intraoperative and postoperative photographs.
• Final records: post-treatment OPG, post-treatment intraoral scans, occlusal records.
• Hygiene and maintenance protocol: recommended recall interval (six-monthly as standard), brush type (soft), interdental aids (Super Floss, brossettes interdentaires souples, jet dentaire), specific contraindications (no ultrasonic scaler below the gum line on implant surfaces; use plastic or carbon-fibre scaler tips).
• Warranty terms and what is covered.
• Contact details for the Stunning Dentistry clinical team.

The document is available in English by default; French-translated copies are provided for the Patient Summary and the hygiene-maintenance protocol section, which are the two documents your French general dentist actually reads in detail. The full technical Clinical Summary remains in English because the clinical terminology is largely Latin-rooted and equivalent across both languages; French prosthodontists uniformly report no issue with the English version.

2. The Digital Records USB

A small USB drive containing:

• Pre-treatment CBCT (DICOM format, openable in any standard dental CBCT viewer).
• Pre-treatment OPG (JPEG and DICOM).
• Pre-treatment intraoral scans (STL format).
• Post-treatment OPG.
• Post-treatment intraoral scans.
• Shade maps.
• Final photographs (front, lateral, occlusal views).
• A digital copy of the Clinical Summary PDF (English) and Patient Summary (French).

Your home dentist can import any of these into their own practice management system (Logos, Julie, Veasy, Desmos, Weclever).

3. The Patient Summary (for you, in French)

A plain-French 4-page summary covering:

• What was done (ce qui a été fait).
• What you should expect from your implants and bridges (ce que vous devez attendre de vos implants et prothèses).
• What routine care looks like (le soin de routine : hygiène quotidienne et maintenance semestrielle).
• When to call your French home dentist (symptômes spécifiques).
• When to call Stunning Dentistry directly (symptômes spécifiques).
• The warranty period and how to claim (période de garantie et processus de réclamation).

You keep this in a safe place and reference it at every six-monthly recall.

What we do before you get home

In the four weeks after your second visit (while you are flying home and settling back in), we:

1. Email your French home dentist a pre-written introduction letter on clinic letterhead, introducing Stunning Dentistry, briefly summarising your treatment, attaching the Clinical Summary PDF, and inviting them to contact us with any questions. The introduction letter is available in French on request.

2. Offer a 30-minute video consultation between your home dentist and your treating clinician at no cost to either party. About 36% of French home dentists take us up on this; those who do almost always report it was useful. Conducted in French if preferred.

3. Add your home dentist to our CPD newsletter (quarterly, covers updates in implantology and prosthetics; they can opt out at any time).

In 47 French cases completed so far, zero home dentists have refused to take over maintenance after receiving the full handover pack. A small number (we estimate 10–12%) ask for an additional conversation with our clinician before they feel fully comfortable. We welcome those conversations and they take around 20 minutes.

The division of responsibility

The six-monthly maintenance over the decades ahead is a shared responsibility. This is the map:

If your French home dentist is hesitant

Occasionally a French dentist will be uncomfortable taking on maintenance of work done abroad. The reasons are usually one of:

• « Je ne connais pas ce système d'implants. » Almost never true for Straumann or Nobel Biocare, which are among the most widely used systems in France; easily addressed with a 10-minute conversation.
• « Je m'inquiète de la responsabilité civile professionnelle pour un travail que je n'ai pas effectué. » A reasonable concern. French regulation under the Conseil National de l'Ordre des Chirurgiens-Dentistes (ONCD) and article R.4127-204 of the Code de la Santé Publique is clear: a dentist providing routine maintenance is not responsible for the original surgical or prosthetic work, provided they document what they inherited and what they did. A short letter from us to their indemnity insurer (MACSF, AXA, Swiss Life, Allianz Professionnels de Santé) usually resolves this.
• « Je ne fais pas la maintenance implantaire en routine. » Increasingly rare in French general practice; most French chirurgiens-dentistes now do routine implant hygiene and many have completed a diplôme universitaire in implantology.

If you have spoken to your French home dentist and they are hesitant, we have three routes:

1. We phone your home dentist directly. Dentist-to-dentist conversation resolves roughly 72% of hesitation cases.

2. We provide a named French dental specialist in each major city who we have worked with on SD patients before and who is happy to take over maintenance. These are prosthodontistes or chirurgiens oraux who will liaise with your general dentist for routine hygiene while retaining overall responsibility for implant care.

3. We connect you with another SD patient in your region who can recommend their own French home dentist. About 38% of French cases after 2023 came via patient referral, which means we have a growing network of French dentists who have quietly become informal SD referral partners.

In 47 French cases, no French patient has been left without a home dentist willing to continue their care.

What you should do

1. Schedule your first post-return French dentist check within 30 days of flying home. Bring the Clinical Summary PDF (English) and the Patient Summary (French). Invite them to keep the PDF on file.

2. Book your six-monthly maintenance at the first check so you have it in the calendar.

3. Use the home-care routine exactly as specified in the Patient Summary for the first six months. Implants don't need to be fussed over, but they do need correct hygiene.

4. Report anything unusual to your French home dentist first, and to your Stunning Dentistry coordinator second. We expect to hear from roughly 19% of French patients in the first year with a small question (usually reassurance about gum appearance or a minor occlusal adjustment). That is what we are here for.

Sources: Stunning Dentistry Clinical Summary template v4.2; Conseil National de l'Ordre des Chirurgiens-Dentistes continuing care guidance 2024; Stunning Dentistry French patient handover records 2021–2026; Code de la Santé Publique Article R.4127-204.