Treatment with Dental Implant
Early treatment after tooth loss, with one or two dental implants preserves supporting dental tissues and prevents drifting of teeth into the area of tooth loss. In addition, since dental implants supported crowns are not attached to neighboring teeth, they do usually not require adjacent teeth to be prepared (trimmed-down) to receive crown or bridge restorations.

This often improves the life expectancy of natural adjacent teeth. The cost of a single tooth replacement can be close to the cost of bridge to replace the same tooth.

When more teeth are lost, dental implants can be used to support replacement teeth that are able to bear the load of the teeth that were lost. This improves the survival of remaining natural teeth, as they will not be burdened with additional chewing loads. When teeth are lost due to fracture or gum disease, remaining teeth are often also already weakened and are more likely to fail when the load on them increases. Dental implants add load bearing units to the dentition rather than just redistributing the load to remaining teeth.

Best of all, tooth replacement with dental implants can feel most like natural teeth.

Treatment with Dental Implant

When all the natural teeth are lost in the upper or lower jaw, there is a great amount of continuing shrinkage of the bones & gums. Figure on the right shows a healthy lower jaw bone with teeth (top). The middle jaw, without teeth, has experienced bone shrinkage & the bottom jaw has experienced severe shrinkage. This lower jaw is very difficult to restore with a complete denture comfortably and is susceptible to fracture. This shrinkage explains why the dentures seem to sink out of sight over time, the upper lip becomes more wrinkled, the

lower denture slips forward & back, the nose and chin become more prominent and closer together, sores appear at the corners of the mouth, new dentures become more difficult to wear (they do not fit like earlier ones) and tissues under dentures become sore. Dental implants can often be used to mechanically anchor your dentures or replace dentures entirely. As few as two implants can often make a big difference to the happiness of denture wearers. Fixed teeth can often be attached to multiple implants and return a mouth to good health & stability. Implant supported teeth can better support your lips and separate the collapsed space between the upper and lower jaw to a more pleasing and functional dimension. Dental implants can make you look better, feel better and allow you to better enjoy social events where your ability to eat, speak and smile are an asset.