Do I Need Dentures? Dental Implants May Be the Answer

When teeth need to be removed from your mouth, it is always a sad occasion. Even if you have cared properly for them over the years, it still may occur that you will lose your permanent teeth. When this happens, you will need to replace those missing teeth to be able to continue chewing food and speaking clearly.

For most of the modern era, this would mean a bridge or dentures. However, in recent years, a process of replacing missing teeth with dental implants has become available. Dental implants, unlike dentures, actually involve replacing the lost teeth down to the roots and attaching them to the jaw so they become true replacement teeth. Dental implants are available at several local reputable dentist offices and one is certain to be the best choice for replacing your missing teeth.

Dental Implants Become Reality

Dental implants came about, like many great discoveries, due to an accident. A physician in Sweden, working on bone grafting experiments had anchored his microscopes into bone using titanium plate. The microscopes were ruined because it was discovered that these plates had become fused with the living bone. Up to this point, medical science had believed this was impossible. With experimentation, it became certain that titanium could be grafted into bone with predictability. With this knowledge, dental implants became a reality.

How Dental Implants Work

In a dental implant, the missing tooth is replaced with a manufactured tooth containing a titanium root. The titanium affixes to the jaw like a graft and the replacement tooth asks just like the original. The tooth is solid and firm and the user feels like the teeth are his or her own.

Are Dental Implants for You?

There are many advantages to choosing dental implants over dentures. Dentures do not affix to the jaw and consequently tend to rub and chafe. They are not as secure and have a tendency to slip at inopportune moments. Implants are much more secure and will never slip because they act just like your original teeth. In Colorado Springs, dental implants can be found available at several locations.

The disadvantages to implants can come in two areas: cost and surgery. The cost of implant surgery is certainly higher than getting dentures and one should be careful to find out if the procedure is covered by one’s insurance agency before deciding to proceed.

The second consideration is that the surgery required for implants requires a certain amount of recovery time that exceeds the normal procedure for dentures. Time must be made accordingly.

Other considerations include the state of the gum and the jaw. If there is severe damage, there may not be enough good bone for the grafts to attach to.

Otherwise, dental implants are an amazing procedure to replace lost teeth.  If you find yourself in that situation, where you need to choose between dentures or dental implants, talk to a Colorado Springs dentist.  He or she will be able to help advise you in making the decision that is right for you.