How Dental Implants Help With Dental Reconstruction
When you lose teeth whether to decay or to a traumatic injury, you need to look into rebuilding your smile and bite. Missing teeth can make it embarrassing to smile and difficult to chew food, but without the stimulus that teeth provide to the jawbone, you can begin to lose bone mass. Whether you have to replace one or many teeth, dental implants can play an important role in dental reconstruction.
What Is a dental Implant?
If you are going to understand how a dental implant can help you to rebuild your smile, you need to know what a dental implant is. A dental implant begins with a titanium post that is implanted into your jawbone. To complete this procedure, a dental surgeon will have to make an incision in and then peel back your gums to expose the bone. The surgeon then uses a dental drill to open a hole in the bone. Once the implant is in place, the surgeon will sew up the gums, and the bone is allowed to heal around and secure the implant in place. This is a painful procedure, and while you can get by with local anesthetic, laughing gas will spare you the mental trauma of watching the procedure as it happens.
How Dental Implants Are Used
Once your dental implant is in place, it can serve as the root for one or more teeth. If you replace one tooth, the pressure that chewing places on the crown of the tooth will travel down the artificial root and stimulate bone growth just like a natural tooth would. On the other hand, if you have lost multiple teeth, a surgeon can use the dental implant to anchor a bridge. One side of the bridge will have to be anchored to a natural tooth to provide support, but most of the pressure placed on the bridge will focus on the titanium post. If you have lost all of your teeth, multiple posts can be used to anchor a set of permanent dentures. Thus, no matter what your dental reconstruction needs are, a dental implant will likely be in your future.
Doing your best to take care of your teeth will spare you the indignities of living with gaps in your smile and the pain associated with dental reconstruction. However, if you do lose a tooth, a dental implant is a good option for creating a stable, good-looking fake tooth that performs like a natural tooth.
Contact a local dentist, such as Gregory T Grubba, for further assistance.
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