Dental Implants
A Brand New Smile with Dental Implants
When it comes to replacing lost or extracted teeth, dental implants offer something that more traditional dental prostheses cannot – a restoration to replace your lost teeth’s roots. Dental implants are root-shaped titanium posts that can be strategically inserted into your jawbone. Their purpose is two-fold; to offer lifelike support for your replacement teeth, as well as help preserve the strength of your jawbone, and therefore your long-term oral health.
Secrets to Why Dental Implants Work
Since the point of dental implants is to replace lost teeth roots, they are designed for your jawbone to fuse to their surfaces, holding them securely in place. Known as osseointegration, this bonding process also allows the implant(s) to reestablish many of your lost tooth root’s functions, like stimulating the nutrient supply to your jawbone. Since each implant is a single post, they can help secure a variety of dental prostheses, including single dental crowns, partial dentures, or complete dentures.
What Are My Options?
A Single Lost Tooth
When you lose a tooth, you can replace it with a dental bridge, which closes the gap with a replacement tooth supported by crowns anchored to surrounding teeth. To support a bridge, the surrounding teeth must be modified to accept the supportive crowns. However, by supporting the replacement tooth with a dental implant underneath it, you can avoid having to modify your healthy teeth for support.
Multiple Lost Teeth
A dental bridge can also replace more than one tooth, provided the teeth were in a consecutive row. If they were in separate areas along your dental ridge with remaining teeth between them, you might require a partial denture, instead. In either case, your dental crowns and/or partial denture may perform better and provide longer-lasting restorative results if they are combined with an appropriate number of dental implants.
Complete Tooth Loss
If you’ve lost all of your teeth on one or both of your dental ridges, then we may recommend All-On-4 implant dentures, which consist of complete dentures supported on four carefully placed dental implants. For some patients, we might also recommend same-day implants, such as if you require tooth extraction and wish to have the replacement dental implant placed the same day.
Bone Grafting
Patients who have endured tooth loss for a long time, or who have suffered from severe gum disease, often experience inadequate jawbone density due to their conditions. If your jawbone has lost strength and is unable to support a dental implant, then Dr. Crouch might suggest a jawbone graft. Using donor bone from another area of your body, or from another donor source, we can strengthen your upper and/or lower jawbone to prepare it for implant placement.