We are happy to help our patients enjoy full smiles by treating their tooth loss. With implant dentistry, we can secure new teeth that look and function like natural teeth, so you can feel confident in your smile again. In today’s blog, your Brooklyn, NY, periodontist and implant expert talks about securing dental implants.
The Impact of Losing Natural Teeth
We know how tooth loss can impact our patients. Missing teeth can lead to embarrassment, issues with clear speech, and impact their ability to enjoy social interactions, leading to poor quality of life. We also know that limited meal options deprive them of their favorite dishes and even essential nutrients. But did you know that once you lose teeth, your body stops sending key nutrients to the jawbone around them? Without these regular doses of nutrients, the jawbone breaks down and erodes, which means further tooth loss and eventually, and prematurely aged appearance! But with implant dentistry, we can keep your smile intact.
Examining Your Smile
To begin the process, we want to talk to you about your oral health, your hygiene habits, and your tooth loss. We will then carefully examine your bite with digital x-rays and CT imaging, so we can understand the cause and severity of your tooth loss, and plan treatment in detail.
Planning Placement
Our team may need to manage underlying factors like gum disease to avoid the risk of implant failure. If you have diseased teeth, we may remove these. If you are missing most of your teeth, then we could gently extract the last few to make room for your new dentures. Our team will also ensure your jaw is strong to support dental implants. If your lower or upper jaw has weakened significantly since you lost your natural teeth, we could strengthen the lower portion with a grafting procedure, and use a sinus lift for the upper portion. This ensures your smile can support new teeth!
Ensuring Your Comfort
Our team will also take your comfort into account. The process involves oral surgery, which is necessary to insert the dental implant posts. Which act as new roots, into your jaw. Surgery may also be necessary if we need to conduct a jawbone grafting or sinus lift, or if we need to extract any of your teeth before placement begins. Our team can numb the area with a local anesthetic to ensure you stay comfortable and relaxed. We also have dental sedation options to help you enter a deep state of relaxation and calm, with little or no memory of the procedure afterward. Even if you have high anxiety levels or special needs, we can make sure you enjoy a positive experience as you receive your new smile!
Securing Your Implant Posts
Once you are ready and properly sedated, we will guide the dental implant post into your jaw with digital surgical guides. We want to ensure each one sits at the perfect angle, position, and depth to ensure they bond with the jaw, stimulate jawbone growth to keep your smile intact and preserve your youthful facial features, and to ensure they can support a new tooth (or multiple teeth).
Crowns and Dentures
For an individual dental implant, once we insert the post we will attach an abutment that extends above the gum line, providing structure for our team to attach a dental crown. The crown will be custom-made to ensure a lifelike appearance and a strong chewing surface too. If you have multiple missing teeth, we could secure a bridge with two dental implants. If you have lost most of them, we could use as few as four implant posts per arch to support a complete row of new teeth. Known as All-On-Four, this offers a complete smile in a single visit, so you leave after one sitting with a complete and beautiful smile!
Our team will schedule follow-up visits to monitor your new teeth and ensure you enjoy good oral health. We can also manage gum disease if you have this, so that the disease doesn’t grow in severity and threaten your new teeth or remaining natural ones. If you have any questions about how we treat tooth loss with one or more dental implants, or if you have gaps in your smile you want to see addressed, then contact our team today to learn more.
Schedule Your Dental Implant Appointment with Brooklyn Periodontics
Our team wants to provide replacement for minor or even severe cases of tooth loss. For more information on implant dentistry, please call Brooklyn Periodontics & Implantology in Brooklyn, NY at (718) 444-3800 today.
