When you lose a tooth or you find out about a diseased tooth
in your oral cavity, you may ask yourself if you need a dental implant.
What are dental implants and how do they help in maintaining
overall dental health? It would be worth discussing in this post.
What are dental implants?
If we define implant in simple words, it is the foundation
which is fixed into the jawbone to support a single missing tooth or multiple
teeth. Having that said, it can be used to fix a crown, a bridge or denture.
Nevertheless, the most common case is that of a single missing tooth.
While restoration of your smile is just a benefit which
seems pretty obvious, the most important benefit to talk about is that implants
mainly support jawbone health. When a tooth is lost or removed, the area of
jawbone from where the tooth is removed starts deteriorating naturally. The
insertion of dental implant stimulates the jawbone. It means that the jawbone
doesn’t only stop deteriorating but it regrows.
Having that said, dental implant may be the best option if
you have lost a tooth or teeth due to injury or disease.
How do the dental implants work?
To understand the working of dental implants, one needs to
understand the parts of a dental implant.
- The first and the main part of a dental implant is the titanium root which is literally called implant. This root or post is surgically inserted into the jawbone area of lost tooth. The stability to this titanium root is provided by the jawbone when it grows and gets hold of the newly inserted root.
- After the root is inserted, an abutment is fixed on the top of the root. This abutment is a connection between implant and the crown which is going to be fixed later.
- When the dental implant is fully fused with the jawbone, now is the time for crown to be placed on the abutment. When your dentist tells you that you are going to get a crown on the implant, you can conclude that you are now all set to use your bite force to chew your favorite hard foods.
Is dental implant safe?
You may wonder if dental implant is safe for you. The matter
of fact is that dental implant is one of the safest ways to restore your lost
tooth. It has been almost 3 decades since dental implants are being used in the
dental offices. And the procedures are improving with time.
