West Palm Beach Dental Implants

What Are Dental Implants?

There are two parts to a dental implant. The root form is placed in the bone and takes the place of the root of the tooth. In the diagram on the right, it is pictured as a titanium screw. Titanium is used because it is the most biocompatible metal and has the capacity to integrate intimately with your bone.

After the bone heals around the root form, a crown is placed on it that restores your tooth. Carefully matched in shade, form, and texture, it can be impossible for the average person to distinguish it from a natural tooth.

Advantages of Dental Implants

The chief advantage of replacing a single missing tooth with a dental implant is that it is conservative. Nothing has to be done with any other teeth. The other option is to use a dental bridge, pictured on the right.

But, as you can see in the picture, a bridge requires that the adjacent teeth have to be prepared for crowns, and then a false tooth is suspended between the two crowns. Not only may this require the grinding down of otherwise healthy teeth, but this also places extra stress on those teeth. In some cases, those teeth eventually succumb to the stress and have to be replaced. In other cases, where the teeth remain strong, there are other things that can go wrong down the road. Any problem that occurs later with any of these teeth, such as decay or a deterioration of the restoration, will require a complete replacement of the entire three-tooth restoration.

Implant-Supported Dentures

When you have lost all your teeth, or many of them, that is when you can most benefit from the advantages of dental implants. For multiple missing teeth, there are only two restorative options — a removable appliance or dental implants. And removable appliances, besides being uncomfortable, have a number of other disadvantages. They interfere with the taste and enjoyment of food, chewing efficiency is compromised or even poor, and they can come out at embarrassing times.

The most serious problem associated with removable dentures is the gradual loss of bone, or what we call facial collapse. When teeth aren't present in your jaw, your body senses that and begins to resorb that bone to use the minerals elsewhere in your body. A person who has been wearing a removable complete denture will find, after ten or twenty years, that there isn't enough bone left to adequately support that denture. At first, the use of denture adhesive pastes can help people get by, but eventually, even that may not be enough, and the dentures may end up being kept in a drawer. Facial collapse also gives a sunken-in appearance to the face.

The presence of dental implants stimulates the bone and prevents bone resorption and thus prevents facial collapse. Plus, they can hold a denture securely, bringing back the comfort, security, and the enjoyment of food that you had when your own teeth were healthy.

 

Click here to read more about the dental implants technique and to see pictures of a dental implants case treated by Dr. Sadati. Click here to read more about implant-supported dentures.