Eight advantages of dental implants

Dental implants are replacement tooth roots. Implants provide a strong foundation for fixed (permanent) or removable replacement teeth that are made to match your natural teeth. Dental implants are metal posts or frames that are surgically positioned into the jawbone beneath your gums.Once in place, they allow your dentist to mount replacement teeth onto them.

Advantages of dental implants

There are many advantages to dental implants, including:

• Improved appearance: Dental implants look and feel like your own teeth. And because they are designed to fuse with bone, they become permanent.

•Improved speech: With poor-fitting dentures, the teeth can slip within the mouth causing you to mumble or slur your words. Dental implants allow you to speak without the worry that teeth might slip.

• Improved comfort: Because they become part of you, implants eliminate the discomfort of removable dentures.

• Easier eating: Sliding dentures can make chewing difficult. Dental implants function like your own teeth, allowing you to eat your favourite foods with confidence and without pain.

• Improved self-esteem: Dental implants can give you back your smile and help you feel better about yourself.

• Improved oral health: Dental implants don’t require reducing other teeth, as a tooth-supported bridge does. Because nearby teeth are not altered to support the implant, more of your own teeth are left intact, improving long-term oral health. Individual implants also allow easier access between teeth, improving oral hygiene.

• Durability: Implants are very durable and will last many years. With good care, many implants last a lifetime.

• Convenience; Removable dentures are just that; removable. Dental implants eliminate the embarrassing inconvenience of removing dentures, as well as the need for messy adhesives to keep them in place.

Implants fuse to your jawbone and provide stable support for artificial teeth. Dentures and bridges mounted to implants won’t slip or shift in your mouth, an especially important benefit when eating and speaking.

This secure fit helps the dentures and bridges as well as individual crowns placed over implants feel more natural than conventional bridges or dentures.

For some people, ordinary bridges and dentures are simply not comfortable or even possible, due to sore spots, poor ridges or gagging. In addition, ordinary bridges must be attached to teeth on either side of the space left by the missing tooth. An advantage of implants is that no adjacent teeth need to be prepared or ground down to hold your new replacement tooth/teeth in place.

Implants are usually more expensive than other methods of tooth replacement. In most cases, anyone healthy enough to undergo a routine dental extraction or oral surgery can be considered for a dental implant. Patients should have healthy gums and enough bone to hold the implant. They also must be committed to good oral hygiene and regular dental visits.

Heavy smokers, people suffering from uncontrolled chronic disorders such as diabetes or heart disease or patients who have had radiation therapy to the head/neck area need to be evaluated on an individual basis.