Dental Implants – Before, During and After

The three stages of a dental implant procedure.

If you were to read a summary of dental implants, you would see that a dental implant is a replacement tooth that is ‘placed’ into the jawbone to replace a missing tooth. Whilst this is true, it does tend to simplify what is a highly sophisticated procedure and one that is gradually replacing dentures as the best option for anyone missing a tooth, or even a number of teeth.

At our dental implant centre in Derby, we are pleased to have Darren Bywater, a highly skilled and trained implant dentist to perform this procedure. Darren also helps to train and mentor other dentists who are interested in including this procedure in their own practice, and is therefore well placed to explain the three key stages of the implant treatment.

Before

Before a dental implant is placed, certain factors have to be right. Naturally, there has to be the position for the implant to be placed, whether this is a natural gap or a tooth that needs to extracted first.

Not only this though but, most importantly, there needs to be a sufficiently strong bone structure into which the dental implant can be placed. This can only be determined through the use of scans and xrays.

In cases where there is insufficient bone density, such as can occur in older people, smokers and those who have had the tooth missing for some time, it may be necessary to perform a bone graft before the implant procedure can take place. This is usually done using bone from the patient themselves, often taken from the hip area. By doing this, once the new bone has fused sufficiently strongly, the implant can then be placed.

X Rays and scans, it should be noted, are also used to determine the precise positioning of the dental implant placement to ensure a successful outcome.

During

During the procedure, the area of the mouth will be numbed using a local anaesthetic. A flap of skin will then be opened in the gum and a hole drilled into the jawbone, into which the implant can be placed. It is at this point that many people cringe at the thought of this; however, the bone actually contains relatively few nerves and should cause no more discomfort than a filling might do.

Once the hole has been drilled, the titanium dental implant is then placed into the hole and the flap sealed to allow the healing process to take place. This generally takes around three months during which time the bone in the jaw will fuse with the titanium implant and provide a strong ‘root’ for the tooth.

Once this process is complete, a dental crown is then attached to the implant using an abutment.

After

Once the implant has been placed, care should be taken for a while to ensure that softer foods are eaten so as not to put undue pressure on the new implant and potentially cause damage. Smoking too is also a “no no”, at least for a while, due to the potential for infection which may threaten the implant.

Once the initial post implant phase has passed though, the dental implant will prove to be a very strong and practical substitute for a real tooth and one that will allow the patient to eat as they wish without the restrictions that dentures can impose.

For more details about the dental implant procedure that we perform at the Darren Bywater Dental Implant Centre in Derby, please visit the relevant pages on our website, or call our implant team on 01332 550933.

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