Dental implant surgery is an alternative to bridges or dentures for replacing missing teeth. These implants stabilize the bone, tissue, and surrounding teeth where they’re placed by substituting the tooth roots of the missing tooth.
With proper care, dental implants can last over 25 years and significantly improve your confidence in your smile while also fixing problems with chewing and speaking caused by missing teeth.
Preparing for Dental Implant Surgery
Your dentist or oral surgeon will inform you of steps to take before each visit for your dental implants. These steps include having you eat soft foods the week of the procedure and avoiding eating or drinking for several hours before the procedure. Likewise, dental implant surgery typically involves local anesthesia or sedation. Because of this, it’s important to have a designated driver to take you home following your procedure.
How Dental Implant Surgery is Performed
Your dental implant surgery will take multiple appointments to complete. Your dentist will begin by preparing the site for placement. The implant body and a special healing cap are then placed into the bone. This gives the implant site time to heal and provides a stable footing for the replacement tooth.
Your dentist will monitor the healing process over several subsequent visits. Once fully healed, the healing cap is removed, and the final restoration is set into the implant and secured. With the whole process complete, your tooth is restored to its ideal shape and function and will continue to stabilize, protect, and preserve the surrounding tissue.
Benefits of Choosing Implants
Dental implants offer many benefits, both cosmetic and functional. For cosmetics, dental implants replace missing teeth by appearing like natural teeth, improving confidence in your smile and oral health.
In terms of function, dental implants help with chewing, eating, and smiling by stabilizing the surrounding bone, tissue, and teeth. They also perform preventative care for issues caused by prolonged missing teeth, such as shifting, periodontal disease, and bone loss.
Risks with Implant Procedures
Like any oral procedure, you must be aware of risks, even if minimal. Your dentist will ensure you’re a good candidate for dental implants before the process. Some risks or side effects include infection, gum recession, nerve damage, and bleeding. Even with these risks, the implant failure rate is very low. Your dentist will always take the proper precautions to support the implant procedure and minimize these risks to ensure long-term success.
Dental Implant FAQ
Your dentist will provide you with local anesthesia to numb the surrounding nerves during the procedure. By doing this, you may feel some pressure, but you shouldn’t feel any pain.
Dental implants can last 25-30 years when the procedure is done correctly and you maintain good oral hygiene.
The dental implant process takes place over several appointments to prepare the site and secure the implant in place. This is usually a three to six-month process, depending on how quickly the area heals. For the final procedure, you can expect each implant to take 1 to 2 hours to place.
In some cases, such as when dental implants require bone grafting, general anesthesia may be used, but for most, the dentist will apply local anesthesia to the area and numb it for the procedure. With local anesthesia, you should not feel any pain during the process.
Both tooth extractions and implants use anesthesia to numb the area during the procedure. That said, dental implants tend to have more postsurgical soreness that will fade with time.
