Dental Implants
When patients lose teeth, many of them yearn to get back the feeling of their original teeth. After spending your entire life with natural teeth in your mouth, it can be challenging to adjust to bridges, partial dentures, or full dentures. Dentures, in particular, can be particularly challenging and require a lot of adjustment. They impact how you eat and drink, speak, and cause infection even when not worn properly. Dentures also can cause regular gagging in some patients. Dental implants are a fantastic alternative to dentures and other solutions.
At Durham Dental Center, we offer dental implant services and can give you recommendations on whether or not dental implants might be right for you. Schedule an appointment today to learn more about dental implants.
Dental Implants are Embedded Directly into Your Gums and Jaw
A dental implant is a metal rod that is surgically inserted into your gums and jaw. The end of this metal rod is capped with a crown that looks and feels like a natural tooth. Because the rod is embedded into your gums, the feel you get from biting is natural and allows you to have a strong bite from your jaw. And unlike dentures, it does not cover any other part of your mouth, allowing you to have a comfortable and happy mouth that lets you fully taste and enjoy food.
Why get Dental Implants?
Even though dental implants are expensive, they provide many benefits that offer a great return on investment.
- Restore the look of your smile: dental implants are made to look natural and custom fit your teeth and mouth.
- Surgically implanted to strengthen jaw and gums: when a tooth is extracted, the gum and bone around it weakens and decays over time; an implant will cause your gums and jaw to continue to produce and strengthen tissue.
- Better alignment across your teeth: a dental implant fills the gap that would otherwise exist in your gum line and jaw, which would induce movement of the surrounding teeth; this means that any natural teeth around the implant will be kept in place by the implant.
- Protection for your gums: tooth extraction sites become magnets for bacteria, but an implant fills that space to protect your gums and give you an area you can continue to keep healthy and strong with brushing and flossing.
- Facial muscle stays stronger with implants: because a dental implant strengthens the jaws and muscles around it, it prevents the muscle tissue on the face from becoming weak and changing the appearance of your face, such as sagging.
- Your bite has renewed strength: being directly implanted into your jaw allows a dental implant to have the same strength as your original bite, as opposed to dentures, which over time tend to weaken the gums beneath them and your overall bite.
Will My Implants Last the Rest of my Life?
If you maintain good oral hygiene, such as brushing and flossing daily and coming in for regular checkups, your dental implants can last the rest of your life. Good dental habits are important because you still need to care for your gums, and any decay can weaken the supporting tissue structure and affect the implant. The crowns on the end of your dental sometimes may need to be replaced after 15 to 20 years, but this depends on many factors, including where in your mouth the implant is placed.
Because of their strength and permanency, dental implants are the preferred tooth replacement option for most dentists and patients. Contact us at Durham Dental Center to learn more about this fantastic option for replacing missing teeth.