Dental implant treatment is a durable way to replace one or more missing teeth caused by injury or disease. It involves using dental implants (metal posts), often made from titanium, to act as roots for your prosthetic teeth. This way, you can have stable, functional, and natural-looking teeth.

Ways Dental Implants Improve Your Oral Health

The following are some ways dental implants can improve your oral health:

1. They Help Preserve Jawbone

Dental implants stimulate the jawbone by serving as a root for a prosthetic tooth. This stimulation encourages the jawbone to stay strong, preventing it from weakening over time.

2. They Improve Your Bite

Replacing missing teeth with dental implants can improve how you bite and chew food, making eating easier and more pleasurable. They are designed to imitate natural teeth, so they fit into your bite quickly and firmly without affecting other teeth or causing pain when biting down. This makes them more comfortable than dentures, which usually slip around and cause discomfort or irritation.

3. They Help Prevent Dental Cavities

Having tooth gaps makes it more challenging to keep your teeth clean, increasing the risk of tooth decay, cavities, and other oral health issues. With dental implants, you can floss and brush like normal, reducing the risk of these issues.

How Dental Implants Improve Your Smile

Missing teeth can be unpleasant when you smile, talk, or laugh. Dental implants from facilities like Dedicated Dental Studios can improve your smile by providing a natural-looking and stable replacement for missing teeth. Unlike removable dentures, you don’t need to worry about them slipping out of place or being visible when you smile or talk, which many people find uncomfortable.

Also, the metal posts used in dental implant treatment are created to blend in with your natural teeth and look indistinguishable from real teeth.

How Dental Implant Procedure Is Done

Here’s what you can expect to happen throughout your dental implant treatment:

• Initial consultation. During this appointment, your dentist will talk about the treatment plan and ensure you meet the candidacy requirements for dental implants. They will also do X-rays and other needed tests to analyze your jawbone, teeth, and gums. At this stage, ask about all your concerns, including the costs and payment plans. You can get more information here.
• Additional procedures. Before your implant surgery, your dentist will perform additional treatments, such as bone graft, sinus lift, and tooth extractions (see tooth removal in Poughkeepsie for more details), if necessary.
• Dental implant surgery. Your dentist will begin the treatment by administering local anesthesia. Sometimes they also give sedatives or general anesthesia, depending on the patient’s case. Then they’ll make an incision in the gum to access the jawbone. After preparing the implant site, they place the metal post and close the cut with stitches.
• Healing time. During this phase, your dental implant will require time to fuse with the jawbone, called osseointegration. This process can take up to 5 months, and your dentist will monitor it through CT scans or X-rays.
• Attaching the abutment and restoring the teeth. After the implant has successfully merged with your jawbone, your dentist will attach an abutment to it and place your replacement tooth/teeth over it to restore your tooth’s appearance and function.

While it’s generally safe, dental implant treatment is an invasive treatment that requires minor surgery. That’s why you should choose a reliable clinic that offers the best dental care. Your dentist should also use state-of-the-art materials and equipment to ensure a positive outcome.