Over the last few decades, dental surgery has made incredible advances. In the past, people who had missing teeth had to choose between dental bridges and dentures. When a person loses a tooth, that creates pressure on the other teeth to fill the gap created, and that harms the structure of your teeth and jaw, as the surrounding teeth lean into the gap. In the long run, your bite and ability to chew is compromised. The gap can also accumulate food particles, leading to gum disease. Tooth loss can also lead to rapid bone loss, and defective speech. Although dental bridges and dentures provided much needed help to people, they were not durable, nor did they appear very natural. Dental implants revolutionized the dental industry, allowing, as Times Square Chronicles reports, people to enjoy a level of dental restoration that is unprecedented.
Dental implants are surgical components that are implanted into your jawbone, in place of your missing tooth’s root, in order to support a dental prosthesis such as a crown, or to act as an orthodontic anchor. A dental implant is made up of an implant body and an abutment. The abutment is attached to the implant body through an abutment fixation screw and starts from the gum right up to the mouth, supporting the crown, or artificial tooth.
Source: U.S. Food and Drug Administration
Before deciding on getting a dental implant, you need to sit down on a comfy Bradington Young leather recliner and speak to your dentist about the pros and cons of getting it, and if you are a good candidate for dental implant surgery. Typically, dentists consider a number of factors before determining whether a person is a good candidate for surgery:
- Your overall health will tell your dentist if you will be able to heal from dental implant surgery and how long you will be able to keep the implant.
- If you are a smoker, this will affect the healing process and reduce the odds of you having dental implants for a long time.
- Healing takes several months, and while that is happening, you will have a temporary abutment where your artificial tooth will go.
Once dental implant surgery is complete, it’s important to:
- Follow your dentist’s instructions.
- Regularly clean your dental implants and neighboring teeth, so that you can increase the odds of long-term success of your teeth.
- Have regular checkups with your dentist.
- If the implant starts to feel painful or loose, you should tell your dentist as quickly as possible.
According to the New York Times, which surveyed the success of dental implants in 2009, 25 years after dental implants first appeared commercially, a critical driver of the success of dental implants is proper selection of patients and practitioners, and once the dental implant is in place, maintaining good oral hygiene. You need to treat dental implants with the same level of care as you should be treating your natural teeth: keeping them clean, and plaque free, through an oral hygiene regime of brushing, flossing and regular cleaning.
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