Are you missing one or even several of your permanent teeth? Are you having trouble eating the foods that you love? This doesn’t have to be a permanent problem, thanks to dental implants.
While dental implants aren’t the only treatment option offered in our office to replace missing teeth, they pack a great many benefits, and they often are the option patients gravitate toward.
The biggest benefit is that they are the most permanent solution to missing teeth. They look, feel and function exactly like your natural teeth. They become a permanent part of your mouth just like your original teeth were, and you will never again have to worry about which foods you can chew effectively or whether your denture will accidentally slip or move at an inopportune time. Anxiety that somebody will see you without your teeth becomes a thing of the past!
Using a dental implant to replace a single missing tooth will also help preserve proper tooth alignment. Space left by a missing tooth allows neighboring teeth to drift, which can change your bite significantly. A missing lower tooth that isn’t replaced can cause the upper tooth it once touched to drift more than it should because it has nothing below it to provide stability. This is known as “supraeruption” and can lead to additional oral health problems.
In addition to dental implants being an ideal replacement for a single missing tooth, they provide a more conservative treatment option if you need a bridge.
Let’s say you’re missing one tooth surrounded by completely healthy teeth. A conventional bridge would require that we prepare the two adjacent healthy teeth for crowns so that they could support a three-tooth bridge to fill your space. This is essentially taking a one-tooth problem and transforming it into a three-tooth problem. If one of those two healthy teeth ever gets a cavity under the bridge, the entire bridge has to come off. Dental implants allow us to replace your missing tooth without even touching the two adjacent teeth. And the best part? They are designed to last even longer than a bridge.
Dental implants also can stabilize a removable partial denture or a full denture. Patients who struggle with loose lower dentures that “float” find that as few as two implants can be a life-changing experience. The lower denture can be snapped onto your dental implants to provide a secure fit.
What if you’re missing all of your teeth? Just a few years ago, removable dentures would have been your only feasible option. We can now offer an alternative – teeth in a day . This is an implant-supported denture system that gives you new teeth in a single office visit. We place the implants, which immediately can be loaded with abutments so your dentures can be secured into place. The implants’ design eliminates the need for a waiting period while they integrate themselves into the bone. Instead, the denture secures the implants and allows them to heal while you use them.
Once placed into your mouth, your new teeth are locked into place and you never have to remove them at home for cleaning. Our hygiene team will equip you with the tools and techniques to clean around your implants to help maintain your restoration.
If you are considering implants, call us today to schedule a consultation to learn more about how they might make smiling and eating more pleasant and easier for you.
