At Walker Dental Team in Olympia, we are always prepared to give you the highest quality information, support, and service when it comes to your dental health. When you have tooth gaps in your mouth, we have the tools and expertise that you need to restore your smile to what it used to be. What enables us to do this is the use of dental implants which assist us in safely mounting dentures, dental bridges, or entirely new teeth within your mouth.
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Dental implants are referring to titanium posts that act much like one of your tooth roots inserted with a new tooth or bridge attached to fill in gaps or damaged teeth. When you come in for oral surgery, we can insert one of these rods directly into your jawbone and underneath your gum line. We do this so that the implant can be attached firmly to a solid surface. This means that anything on top of the post will not move unexpectedly or become loose. The alternative to this is dental bridges that can have some negative effects on neighboring teeth because of their anchoring effect. By choosing dental implants, we will not have to grind down adjacent teeth in order to keep the new tooth or teeth in their correct spot.
To determine whether dental implants are best for you, our first step is for us to look at your gums and jawbone to see if they are healthy and strong enough to support a titanium post. If the bone turns out to be too soft or too thin, we can still make it work so long as you are open to a bone graft procedure that will strengthen your jawbone. Our next step will be to check the location of your sinuses and the bone height of your upper jaw. If either of these are in problematic positions, this can be fixed with a sinus lift procedure. Once we have determined that your jaw is correctly positioned, your gums are healthy, and that your bones are strong, then we can give you the dental implants you need to address the gaps between your teeth.
Though placing a titanium post in your mouth may sound intimidating, the surgical procedure for dental implants is actually quite fast and painless. If your bone and gum tissue are in excellent shape, then you might only require a mere half hour to complete the treatment. Once you come in for your appointment, the first thing we will do is remove a small section of bone from the target area so that we can put an implant in its place. Given that this opening is usually small, you may not require any stitches once it is made. Because the dental implant surgery is so simple, acetaminophen or ibuprofen is usually more than enough to counteract any soreness or pain that you may experience afterward.
If you think that dental implants might be right for you and you would like to learn more, please feel free to contact one of our board certified Olympia dentists today.