A person’s smile is one of their major assets, a lovely smile is a source of pride and when a person looses or damages a tooth beyond repair the experience is shattering to their confidence and outlook on life. It is terribly embarrassing to constantly hide behind your hand every time you smile; furthermore a missing tooth tends to add years to a person’s appearance. In the not too distant past the only solutions were to wear a removable denture or to have a fixed bridge but today a qualified dentist in Northbrook can move on to a process that leaves the patient with a replacement tooth that looks and feels every bit as natural as the real tooth it replaces, the process is called dental implantation.
A dental implant is actually a titanium “screw” that is imbedded directly into the patient’s jawbone, in a sense it can be thought of as a replacement root. Over six months or so this titanium implant fuses to the jaw bone, implants are ideal for those patients with healthy gums and bone, they can last a lifetime and once the procedure is over the patient forgets that he or she ever suffered the embarrassment of a missing tooth.
For patients who have healthy gums and ample jaw bone the success rate for a dental implant is extremely high. The tooth root is important for the jaw bone area in which the tooth is located, if the tooth is extracted and not replaced the jaw bone simply shrinks to fill the void. This phenomenon is eliminated with a dental implant as the implant takes the place of the non-existent tooth root. Unlike a bridge or dentures there is no need to involve other teeth, when the process is over the only people who will know it is not your natural tooth will be you and your dentist in Northbrook.
Dental implants are not just “one-off”; a patient can have as many implants as the dentist feels can be had based on the amount of jaw bone available. Most people have less jaw bone towards the back of their mouth and the sinus cavities are also located there, often a dentist will avoid this area for an implant but all other teeth are good candidates.
