Information on dental implants

Be it the ravages of time or an unexpected fist, many perils lie in wait to take your teeth. Should the unfortunate occur, a stand in is required for both ornamental and practical reasons. Dentures have previously been the common solution, but increasingly dental implants are becoming a popular alternative as a result of their longer term effectiveness and their ability to preserve and aid surrounding healthy dental tissue.

Benefits of implants

Dental implants offer an improvement over false teeth and dental bridges in a variety of ways. Perhaps the most obvious advantage, in contrast to dentures, being functionality: A dental implant, when done correctly, should function just as well as your actual teeth, so no worrying about hard foods or inflammation of the gums. A common occurrence post-tooth loss is atrophy (the bone surrounding where tooth used to be gradually decaying) which can lead to a change in jaw shaping. A dental implant can help preserve and, in some cases, stimulate the growth of surrounding bone structure for patients in Liverpool.

The main advantage of an implant over a traditional dental bridge (another type of fake tooth) is that in the implant’s case there is no need to affect healthy surrounding teeth. Traditional bridges usually require neighbouring teeth to be etched and prepared in order to fix the replacement teeth in place using crowns.  Implants, however, require no special cleaning procedures, unlike dentures and bridges, and should be indistinguishable from your surrounding teeth.

A few requirements

Implants require a reasonable quantity and quality of bone tissue to be available from the patient, which should not be a problem for most healthy individuals. It should be noted, however, that excessive drinking and smoking can hinder the success of implant treatment.