What are dental implants?
Dental implants are substitute tooth roots on which your provider can place an artificial tooth. If you lose a tooth or have one or more extracted, dental implants with a crown or denture give you the most natural-looking replacement tooth.
Missing teeth not only affect your appearance; it can make it harder to eat properly. The socket where your tooth was could get infected, and the bone is likely to start deteriorating as soon as the tooth comes out. Having missing teeth can seriously affect your confidence, and even make you reluctant to smile.
The team at Rockwell Oral and Facial Surgery can resolve all these problems using dental implants. They offer a range of solutions that include specialist implants and bone grafting procedures, from world-leading suppliers, including Nobel Biocare™, Straumann®, BioHorizons®, and Zimmer Biomet.
What are the advantages of dental implants?
There are several significant advantages to having dental implants, including:
Bone loss reduction
As soon as you lose a tooth, you also start to lose bone from your jaw. Dental implants prevent bone loss.
Stability
Dental implants form a solid base for crowns, bridges, and dentures that prevents movement and keeps the replacement teeth securely in place.
Improved speech
Wearing dentures affects how well you speak because they can move around. Dental implants hold your dentures in place so that you can speak more clearly.
Easier chewing
Chewing with dentures can be a challenge, and you might not be able to eat some of your favorite foods. With the exception of very sticky foodstuffs that could strain the implants, you can eat anything you like when you have dental implants.
Cost-effectiveness
If you care for them correctly, dental implants could last the rest of your life. In contrast, dentures last an average of five to 10 years.
Less fuss
Dentures require sticky adhesives to keep them in place. These adhesives often don’t work very well and are messy and fiddly to use. You also need to take your dentures out to clean them. With implants, you don’t need to do any of these things, making the experience far less of a fiddle.
How are dental implants fitted?
Dental implants have a screw-in end that your provider at Rockwell Oral and Facial Surgery secures into your jawbone. After a while, the bone grows around the screwed-in implant as if it were a part of your body.
On top of the screw end of the dental implant is a post called an abutment. This is where your provider fits the crown, bridge, or denture.
Some patients don’t have enough bone to screw the implant into the jaw securely. If this is a problem in your case, your provider might need to perform a bone graft procedure first to build up your jaw bone. Alternatively, they might use All-on-4® same-day dental implants, which can be angled in the jaw if there isn’t enough depth for the screw.
Find out more about the benefits of dental implants by calling Rockwell Oral and Facial Surgery today or book an appointment online.
