When you have missing teeth, this can impact the health, function, and appearance of your smile. Eventually, you could even develop a weakened jawbone that caused an aged appearance! With dental implants, we can protect your smile and facial structure. In today’s blog, your Shrewsbury, MA, dentist talks about dental implants, and how we can use them to take on minor or severe tooth loss, so you can enjoy a complete smile again, sometimes in as little as one visit!

The Factors Behind Tooth Loss

What causes our smiles to lose natural teeth? This could happen due to a serious injury or accident, or possibly as a result of a severe cavity or infection. The most common factor behind adult tooth loss is periodontitis, the advanced stage of gum disease. When we examine your smile, we will employ digital technology to assess the cause of your missing teeth. We may need to treat underlying issues like periodontal disease to ensure your new teeth can last.

The Changes Missing Teeth Cause

When you lose your natural teeth, this could cause serious trouble for your oral health. For example, the gap could cause nearby teeth to drift from position. The resulting misalignment causes further changes to the appearance of your smile, and increases the risk of tooth decay and gum disease. The gaps in your teeth upset bite balance and could leave you vulnerable to issues like TMJ disorder and bruxism (teeth grinding). You could have trouble eating your favorite foods and issues speaking clearly could arise too. The body will suspend the flow of calcium and phosphorus to the jawbone once it registers a missing root, which causes the underlying bone structure to lose mass and density, causing further tooth loss and even an aged appearance.

Planning Treatment

To begin, our team will take detailed digital images of your smile to assess the cause and extent of your tooth loss. We can then plan the placement of your dental implant post, choosing the most appropriate angle, position, and depth to insert these new posts. If you have a jawbone severely weakened by tooth loss, we may discuss grafting or sinus lift to ensure there is enough jawbone to support your new tooth roots. We plan the procedure in detail so the placement process is simple and complication-free.

Ensuring Your Comfort

We want to make sure the procedure is a comfortable one too, which means we will administer a local anesthetic to the area where the placement is occurring to numb it. We also have dental sedation to help you enter a deep state of calm and relaxation, with little to no memory of the procedure afterward. The sedation we choose will be based on your age, weight, medical history, and any medications you are taking, as well as your anxiety levels. Your placement process will be a comfortable experience!

Placing and Restoring Dental Implants

Once we have planned the procedure in detail and numb your smile, we will guide the implant posts into the smile at the right angles and positions. Next, we attach an abutment to the post that extends above the gum line. We connect a crown to the post, which acts as the new visible portion of your smile. You will be able to smile with confidence, and the crown provides a durable chewing surface. If you have more than one missing tooth, our team could insert multiple posts to support a bridge or even a full set of dentures. These will be fixed in place and ever slip when you eat or drink. You can also care for them as you could natural teeth. Your new teeth can last for decades to come. Possibly a lifetime, with proper care and attention.

If you have any questions about how we can replace missing teeth with dental implants, and take on minor or severe cases of tooth loss, then contact our team today. We want to help return your smile to optimal health, function, and beauty with our fixed and durable replacement teeth, and ensure you can smile with confidence again too.

Schedule Tooth Replacement with Our Shrewsbury Team!

Our team wants to offer treatment for tooth loss, providing a solution that looks and acts like natural teeth. To learn more about implant dentistry, or to schedule your next appointment, give us a call at Modern Dentistry Of Shrewsbury at (508)842-8838 today! Don’t let tooth loss impact the health and beauty of your smile, enjoy better bite function and more with the placement of our dental implants.