Losing teeth can harm your oral health and leave you feeling self-conscious about your smile. We want to help you receive a replacement that looks natural and protects your smile’s health and function. In today’s blog, your Brooklyn, NY, periodontist and implant expert discusses how dental implants provide lifelike tooth replacement.
The Causes of Your Missing Teeth
First, let’s talk about tooth loss. How do we lose our natural teeth? Minor tooth loss could occur due to an injury to the face or jaw, or even as a result of an untreated cavity or infection. More severe tooth loss tends to be the result of periodontal disease, or more accurately, the periodontitis stage of the disease. As part of your visit, we will examine your smile to assess the cause and extent of your tooth loss. If you have periodontitis, then we can offer periodontal care to manage the issue and prevent implant failure and further tooth loss!
The Impact Tooth Loss Has on Your Smile
What does one or more missing teeth mean for your smile? When you have lost teeth, this could be embarrassing and lead to issues with engaging in social interactions, harming your quality of life. Missing teeth could lead to misalignment, TMJ disorder, and even bruxism (teeth grinding). Tooth loss is also connected to a loss of mass and density in the jaw, which can cause further tooth loss and even an older appearance. Not to mention the impact on your meal options or even the ability to speak clearly. With dental implants, we can provide a lifelike solution that also preserves your jawbone and keeps your facial structure intact.
Examining Your Smile and Planning Treatment
To get started, our team will take a close look at your smile with digital x-rays and CT imaging, which provides high-definition images instantly chairside, so we can walk you through the diagnostic process. We want to make sure your jaw can support dental implants. If they can’t, we could use options like grafting for the lower jaw or a sinus lift for the upper portion to ensure your smile is implant ready. We will also choose the best angles, positions, and depths to insert the new dental implants. They will be accepted by the body as new roots and bond with the jaw, which means they keep the jaw and smile intact and allow your new teeth the potential to last for decades to come.
Anesthesia And Sedation
Dental implant placement involves oral surgery, which we know can make some patients feel nervous. To ensure a comfortable experience, we can administer a local anesthetic to the area where the placement will happen, and also offer sedation to help people enter a deep state of calm, so they feel relaxed and often have little to no memory of the procedure at all. We want your dental implant experience to be a positive one, even if you have special needs or dental anxiety.
Placing Dental Implants
When you are ready for the placement process, we will employ digital surgical guides to gently guide these posts into place, ensuring we set them at the right angles and positions to support new teeth and keep your jawbone strong and intact. We can use one to replace a single missing tooth, completing it with a lifelike crown. But we can also address more severe tooth loss, even total tooth loss, with a fixed set of teeth.
All-On-Four
Instead of traditional removable dentures that need replacement every few years, we can insert as few as four dental implants into the jaw, and attach a new set of teeth to them. These will look natural and allow you to eat your favorite food again. We can attach them in the same visit as the implant placement, so you leave with a full smile. Since these are fixed in place, the new teeth will never slip when you eat or speak, and they don’t need to be removed for cleaning or soaking. Instead, they look and function like natural teeth and last far longer than traditional dentures.
If you have any questions about our lifelike tooth replacement, or if you want to try dental implants for your smile, then contact our team today to learn more.
Schedule Your Visit to Obtain a Full Smile with the Team at Brooklyn Periodontics
A full smile is possible, even if years have passed since you lost your teeth. For more information on the dental implant process, please call Brooklyn Periodontics & Implantology in Brooklyn, NY at (718) 444-3800 today.
