Dental Implants and Bone Grafts

Dental implant is a titanium screw. A lot of people want to think of it as an artificial man-made root.Why should a person get a dental implant?  
Well, when you have a missing tooth, you have four options. One option is to do nothing. The second option is to make a removable partial. Let’s say you are missing a tooth back here and you do nothing, the tooth behind it will drift and lean forward in a way that will cause this tooth to develop a pocket on. Also, the opposing tooth on top will start to creep downward and super erupted. So you do not want to do nothing! In the second option when you do a removable partial, the only thing negative about that is that it moves around when you are talking and eating. Patients do not like that! The third option is to do a permanent bridge. In doing this you will need to prepare adjacent teeth, take a mold of them, and eventually cement the bridge. Now, the space is gone. The fourth option is to do a dental implant. When you put a dental implant in, the implant will stimulate the bone so that the bone does not shrink anymore. All the other options of doing nothing, removable partial or a bridge, the bone is shrinking all the time. So the dental implant is the best thing to do in this situation. The other good thing about dental implant is that you are not worried about the other two teeth. For example; let’s say we are doing a permanent bridge. That means that you are grinding one tooth on this side, and grinding one tooth on the other side. We do not know how strong this tooth is, in relation to this tooth. In doing an implant, you are only relying on the implant; you are not touching other teeth. So you preserve good teeth. That is why I recommend the implant. A third case scenario is when a patient has all their teeth pulled. A lot of time when they have all their teeth pulled as you can see the bone is shrinking. That is what I meant about when you do not have teeth you will not have roots as well, and your bones are shrinking, so you want to put implants in to preserve the bone. In this situation for a lower denture when a patient has no teeth, it is the most uncomfortable situation because your lower denture is always moving. If a patient could put a couple implants on the bottom and make the denture hook over the implant, this has made the patient much more comfortable because now the lower denture is not moving around anymore. Now, if you can afford to put more implants, the more implants you have, the more rigid it will be. For example, if you put two, it is pretty good, but if you put ten, we can make single tooth and we can make them like natural teeth. If you have a choice, you should always pick implants over everything else.

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