When you lose your teeth, whether due to poor oral hygiene or injury, you could develop complications in the health, function, and appearance of your smile. To provide a replacement that protects and preserves your smile, we could recommend dental implants. In today’s blog, your Celina, TX, dentist talks about our approach to dental implant placement, including same-day solutions!
The Causes of Tooth Loss
Why do we lose our natural teeth? For some, this could be due to a cavity or infection that isn’t treated early on with a restoration. At the advanced stage, the tooth could be lost or require extraction to stop the spread of infection. A serious injury to a tooth that leaves it unable to be repaired with a crown could become infected and require removal. You could lose teeth to gum disease too. In fact, the advanced stage of the disease, periodontitis, is the number one cause of adult tooth loss. We recommend people of all ages see us every six months for a checkup and cleaning, because we can often address the issues that could eventually cost you your natural teeth in the early stages, sometimes before you even experience mild discomfort.
The Impact on Your Smile
When you lose your natural teeth, this can have serious impacts on your quality of life and your overall oral health. When the body recognizes the missing root, it will stops sending doses of calcium and phosphorus to the area around the lost root. The bone tissue breaks down, causing further tooth loss and an aged appearance. The gaps could allow surrounding teeth to drift from position, the resulting misalignment increasing the risk of tooth decay and gum disease, as well as negative changes to your smile’s appearance. For others, missing teeth means issues eating your favorite dishes, and problems speaking clearly. The pressure on your jaw itself could also leave you at risk for painful issues like TMJ disorder and bruxism (teeth grinding). To avoid these issues and safeguard your oral health and youthful facial features, you need to seek tooth replacement with dental implants.
Dental Implants
Dental implants can replace an individual missing tooth or help secure a prosthetic, such as a bridge or even a full set of dentures. They can last for decades to even a lifetime, and will function like natural teeth. That’s because the implant itself, a biocompatible titanium post, will act as a new root. We will surgically insert it into the jaw at specific angles, positions, and depths to ensure it can function like a root and bond with the jaw. Once this occurs, we can complete your new tooth by securing an abutment to the post that extends above the gum line. Finally, we connect a crown, which looks natural and can handle daily bite forces with ease, so you have a new tooth that looks and functions like a natural one. But what if your tooth loss has weakened your jaw?
Jawbone Grafting
When you lose too much mass and density in your jaw, this could weaken the bone structure and prevent your smile from being able to support dental implants. However! We can rebuild and strengthen these portions with oral surgery. For the lower jaw, we can provide tissue taken from your body or from a synthetic source to strengthen the area and enable it to support new roots. For the upper, we could conduct a sinus lift, raising the sinus floor to uncover structures that can secure your new roots firmly in place.
Anesthesia and Sedation
We know the idea of oral surgery can be anxiety-inducing for some patients. But don’t worry! In addition to administering a local anesthetic, our team can also offer sedation to help you enter a calm and relaxed state, with little to no memory of the procedure, so your oral surgery is a comfortable experience.
Same-Day Implant Dentures
If you have lost most or all of your teeth, we could potentially provide a complete set of implant dentures in only one visit, so you leave with a full smile. We will extract the last few teeth and then insert the posts, sometimes as little as four per arch. We then attach a temporary to them, and will swap this for your final denture at a later date, but at no point do you leave with an incomplete smile if you qualify!
Schedule Your Dental Implant Placement with Celina Family Dentistry!
Our team wants to help you regain a full smile, whether you have one missing tooth or total edentulism. To learn more about replacing your missing teeth, talk to a member of our team today at Celina Family Dentistry at (214) 851-0130 today!
Recent Comments