How a Dental Implant Can Improve Your Smile

Here at McLoughlin Dental Care, we fully understand that losing a tooth can be upsetting and some people find it extremely distressing. The problem can be made worse if your tooth loss is in your smile line, exposing a gap whenever you try to talk or laugh with others. Luckily, there is a good, long-term solution which is to choose dental implant treatment. This treatment can be extremely effective, especially for replacing single missing teeth. It can provide you with a highly aesthetic solution for tooth loss and the modern materials used to create implant-supported teeth look so natural that it is unlikely anyone will realize you ever lost a tooth. There are several clear advantages in choosing this treatment and we would like to explain why it’s worth considering a dental implant.

Dental Implants Can Help You to Have a Healthy Smile

When you lose even a single tooth it has a detrimental effect on your remaining natural teeth. These teeth can become less stable and this is due to loss of jawbone. To explain how this happens, lets briefly talk about how your jawbone is affected by tooth loss and the loss of tooth roots. Natural teeth have tooth roots that extend into the jawbone. A tooth root helps to anchor the tooth firmly in place, but it also has another important function which is to make sure that old bone cells are replaced as they die off. Your jawbone is continually remodeling as new bone cells are produced to replace the old bone cells.

Normally, whenever you bite down onto a natural tooth, you bite onto the tooth crown which is the part visible in the mouth and this creates sensations that extend into the tooth root. These sensations tell the jawbone surrounding your tooth root that it must replace old and dying bone cells, ensuring that this bone remains healthy and strong. When a tooth fails because of trauma, infection or decay, then your dentist will remove the entire tooth including the tooth root, removing the stimulation to the surrounding bone so that when old bone cells die off they are no longer replaced. Over time this can greatly affect your jawbone and even if you choose another solution for tooth loss such as a dental bridge or partial denture, it won’t restore these functions.

A dental implant is the only solution that artificially replaces a tooth root ensuring that when you bite down, the surrounding bone receives the correct stimulation to ensure old bone cells are renewed. A dental implant’s effect on your jawbone and its ability to prevent jawbone loss is perhaps the most important reason for choosing this solution for tooth loss.

The Benefits of Dental Implants for Your Smile

The main reason why most people want to replace missing teeth is for aesthetic reasons. Here again, a dental implant is an excellent choice. When you have a single implant-supported tooth then the visual effect can be amazing. Your new tooth will emerge from your gums, just as if it were your own. It is extremely difficult for anyone to tell that it is a replacement. Additionally, dental implant treatment protects and preserves your healthy teeth. Traditional tooth-supported restorations such as a dental bridge require healthy teeth to be reshaped as these must support crowns that are then attached to replacement teeth, creating a strong, stable restoration. This option can be helpful where the adjacent teeth could benefit from dental crowns but otherwise, it could mean removing healthy tooth structure. With dental implants, this isn’t necessary because they are self-supporting. 

Each Implant is Custom-Designed for Excellent Aesthetics

Our implant dentists, Dr. Donald Nimz and Dr. Kaveen Ranasignhe takes enormous care when planning and placing dental implants, using high-tech diagnostic and planning equipment which is essential because the implant must be inserted into precisely the right location. This ensures that the implant can properly heal or fuse with the surrounding bone, so it is strong enough to support an implant tooth. It is also vital to ensure the implant avoid important structures in the jawbone and which include nerves, sinus cavities, and blood vessels. Good treatment planning helps to ensure that the implant crown is aesthetically pleasing. The implant must be in exactly the right location to be properly restored so that it looks great, giving you a beautiful new tooth that is fully functional.

Dr. Nimz and Dr. Kaveen will custom-design your crown to make sure it has what’s called the correct emergence profile as the crown emerges from the gums and which gives a nice, natural curvy shape to the tooth. This creates a more aesthetically pleasing appearance while ensuring the implant crown is easy to clean and that the gum tissues around the implant crown receive the correct stimulation. It is important because the proper emergence profile helps to keep the surrounding gums healthy and strong. Without the right profile, your new tooth wouldn’t look as natural and may be too bulky or too flat.

Using Technologically Advanced Materials to Make Your Crown

There are probably several different materials which can be chosen to fabricate your new crown. One option is to have a porcelain-fused-to-metal crown which has a strong metal substructure that is covered by advanced and lifelike porcelains. This type of crown can produce very good results, but for an optimal outcome, it is often better to choose an all-ceramic crown when restoring front teeth. These crowns can be used to restore any tooth in the mouth using technologically advanced materials. The advantage of choosing an all-ceramic crown is because the material looks amazingly natural. One of the most up-to-date ceramics is made from a material called zirconia which is incredibly strong and durable while creating excellent aesthetics. This material is strong enough to be used anywhere in the mouth, even when restoring back teeth.

A Treatment That Will Soon Restore Your Smile

Dental implants are an intelligent way to restore missing teeth because they provide such a long-term and aesthetically pleasing solution for tooth loss. You will need a minor surgical procedure to place a dental implant, but thanks to all that advanced planning, the actual appointment is really quite quick. Most people feel perfectly comfortable with just local anesthesia and can get back to work the very next day. Implant teeth are easy to care for with a diligent daily oral routine combined with regular checkups and cleanings here at McLoughlin Dental Care. With a success rate in excess of 95%, this is one treatment that should keep you smiling for a very long time.