Dental Implants
What is an implant?
A dental implant is an artificial root that is placed into the bone. It is made from titanium which is readily accepted by the body. After placement new bone fuses to its surface, permanently fusing the implant into your mouth. It does not require adjacent teeth for support.
What can dental implants be used for?
Implants are used to replace missing teeth. Once an implant has integrated we can attach a restoration onto it depending how many teeth you need to replace.
Crowns
We can attach a single crown to an implant to replace a missing tooth. Replacing a single tooth with an implant supported crown is much more conservative than a bridge as it does not rely on neighbouring teeth. This is ideal if the adjacent teeth are in pristine condition so we don’t need to remove healthy tooth structure.
Bridge
If we have multiple implants we can attach more teeth to create a implant supported bridge. This is a good option to replace a removable partial denture. Implants are durable enough to support longer bridges then natural teeth.
Dentures
If you have a loose denture then we can use implants to help hold it into place so you don’t need to use denture adhesive. If we use enough implants we can make it so the denture is fixed in place and you won’t need to take it out. This can be done for full or partial dentures.
To have an implant placed you need enough bone. We assess this by obtaining a CT scan of the area and taking moulds. We generally restrict implants to adults whose mouths have fully developed. In most cases this restricts candidates to 25 years or older.
Those individuals who are smokers or have compromised healing and underlying health issues may not be good candidates as the implant has a lower chance to integrate successfully.
At Southern Dental Care we place implants via computer guided surgery after obtaining a CT scan.
Often, we can place implants without incisions, in a procedure which only takes about 20 minutes. This results in almost no pain post cooperatively and a very fast recovery.
Schedule Your Visit
Our knowledgeable dentist is ready to help you restore your smile with dental implants. If you’d like to learn more about the process and your candidacy, contact our team at Southern Dental Care – Smile By Design today to get started—we can’t wait to meet you.
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