Secure a new smile with dental implants
By Geraldine Fitzgerald
Got a gap in your smile or can only chew on one side?
Most people of a certain age do, not least because Irish dentists used to solve every niggle by yanking out the offending tooth. If you have lost teeth – one, a few or all of them – you really do need to consider replacing them, or you may be dining on soup for the rest of your days!
It merits mention that dentists these days no longer view extraction as the catch-all solution to a damaged tooth. Once a tooth is gone, the neighbouring teeth start to lean into the space, impacting your bite, and ultimately you may lose even more teeth. The name of the game these days is to preserve as much of your natural dentition as possible.
With decayed or painful teeth, you might have an option of a root canal treatment. This means the nerve of the tooth is removed (along with the pain) leaving the enamel shell, which is then ‘capped’ with a crown, restoring normal bite function without taking the tooth out.
Missing a few or many teeth means you might have bridges or dentures. Find the terminology a bit confusing? A bridge is a fake tooth or teeth that is attached to natural teeth at either side of a gap in your smile. It literally ‘bridges’ the gap.
However, the natural teeth on each side of that gap usually must be shaved down to take a bridge, destroying more of your own dentition.
Dentures are loads of fake teeth stuck together, that sit over your gums. Some of them are very posh and high-tech, but they’re still false teeth. They don’t have any roots, so your jawbone is empty like a barren garden.
The bone starts to recede away as it has nothing to live for, which makes your cheeks fall inwards as there’s no support behind them anymore. Lips pucker and the face becomes gaunt and skeletal. Industrial strength fixative won’t keep those dentures in firmly enough to let you ever savour an apple again, and dentures are prone to popping out at the most inopportune moments.
Dental implants are the gold standard of tooth replacement, but it’s not an overnight process nor is it cheap. A dental implant is a root replacement. It’s a tiny little titanium post inserted into the jaw that acts like a tooth root, and you can then put a prosthetic tooth, called a crown, on top.
You don’t need an implant for every crown; depending on your case you can get several prosthetic teeth atop two or four implants to anchor the whole arrangement.
The joy of using implants to fix crown, bridges or dentures to is that they can then function like natural teeth, as they can’t move about. The titanium post in the jaw gives the bone a reason to live, so it slows recession.
If you’ve been wearing traditional false teeth and are worried you’ve already lost a lot of bone mass, don’t despair- granular bone material can be used now to augment your own jawbone in order to securely hold a dental implant.
So, the bottom line is hang on to as many natural teeth as you can. If they’re gone; replace them with dental implants.
There are several excellent dental implant specialist surgeries in Cork where you can spend your kids’ inheritance - at least you’ll have a big smile on your face!