Dental Implants

A dental implant is basically a way to replace a missing tooth where you no longer have a tooth root. It's a great way to replace single teeth or multiple teeth all at once. Single tooth replacement options would include a dental implant, or a bridge, or even a removable partial denture. When you have a dental implant, that's actually fixed into the bone, and so it's not something you would remove. You're able to floss it like you would floss a normal tooth, basically. A bridge, though, would be anchored to the teeth adjacent to the missing tooth space. It's actually cemented into place, and you would have to clean underneath the bridge. But the benefit of the bridge, too, is that you don't have to take it out of your mouth. So the process for getting a dental implant includes the planning phase, the surgical phase, and then the restorative phase. The typical dental implant placement procedure actually takes just on average about 30 minutes. It doesn't take very long. Basically, the amount of time for a filling. After a dental implant is placed, the initial healing takes about two weeks. Basically, for the gum tissue to kind of shape and things to kind of settle down. The bone healing, however, does take about three months. And the reason that we wait three months to restore an implant is because we need the bone around the implant to basically solidify and mature enough for the implant to become stable enough to restore. So most of my patients that we restore with dental implants are so happy to have that functional chewing surface back. Usually, patients that we place implants on have been missing teeth for quite some time, either tooth loss from decay or periodontal disease, and so they've had issues with even the teeth that they once had. So whenever we get implants in, and they're able to chew on them, it's just life-changing.