Who Doesn’t Love Options?
When you go shopping for a new car, you may have already spent countless hours studying the options available. You owe it to yourself to devote the same care to learning about the choices available to replace your missing teeth. There is one choice that ultimately gives you the most options. Click here to learn what that choice is.
When Is a Missing Tooth Not a Missing Tooth?
Of course, a missing tooth is always missing until it is replaced. But how you choose to have the tooth replaced might fool you into forgetting that it ever went missing. Wouldn’t that be great? It can happen when you choose to replace missing teeth with dental implants.
A Little History
The Mayans in 600 A.D. attempted to replace missing teeth with shells, ivory, even animal bones. In the 1700s and 1800s more experimentation was done using human bone without success as patients’ immune systems routinely rejected the foreign material. Over the intervening years, various metals were tried, again without success. Finally, in the 1950s a Swedish researcher working with titanium found it to be compatible with human bone. In the 1980s, after many more years of experimentation, titanium dental implants were introduced. The evolution of the dental implants available to you today and the treatment process itself have revolutionized our approach to replacing missing teeth.
How Dental Implants Offer You More Options
Before dental implants were available, our options to replace only one tooth included a partial bridge or a fixed, permanent bridge. Now you may have the option to have an implant placed at the site of the missing tooth. Later, adding a crown restores tooth function without involving the abutment teeth for a fixed bridge or a removable partial plate to hold one tooth. The new implant with its restoration will look and function just like your “real” tooth – maybe even better.
For various reasons it may not be practical (or possible) to replace numerous teeth with individual implants. In these instances, well-placed implants serve as an excellent, permanent base for the restorations that will be done. With the implants, we can create permanent bridges in areas that previously did not have enough remaining teeth for support. And, in cases where quite a few — or all — of the teeth are missing in the upper or lower jaw, a few implants can be placed to provide an extremely solid base for a partial or full denture. Full dentures that rest on implants are extremely secure and require none of the dreaded denture adhesive to keep them in place.
Do You Want to Find Out If Dental Implants Will Work for You?
If you want to explore the possibility of replacing one or more of your teeth with an implant, please contact our office to schedule a consultation. We will examine your medical history and evaluate your bone health to determine whether you are a good candidate for implants. We are pleased to serve Denton, Maryland, and the surrounding area.
