Dental implants don't last forever. Complications can happen even though most of them are rare. They can have infection, inflammation, bone loss, looseness and fracture. Dental implant fracture can be implant itself, supported crown or abutment screw. The most common fractured part is the abutment screw. It would be a nightmare if the broken screw couldn't be removed safely without damaging the implant. That means the implant has to be redone.
This implant abutment screw broke when the patient was travelling in Germany. A local dentist had a look and told the patient there's nothing he can do and you have to go back to Australia and have it fixed.
From the picture and x-ray, we can see the broken screw was half in the crown and half in the implant. After 30 minutes of manipulation, the broken screw was successfully removed without damaging the implant thread. A new screw was inserted with the crown. Broken abutment retrieval normally is a time consuming procedure. In some cases, it is even impossible to rescue the implant, which means the whole implant procedure has to start over again.