Why Dental Implants in Park Ridge are Your Smile’s Best Friend

When it comes to your smile, there’s much more than meets the eye. For instance, if you lose a tooth, the gap left in your smile is obvious. However, the oral structures that you don’t see suffer more serious and far-reaching consequences from tooth loss, and addressing these effects is a bit more involved than simply placing new crowns on top of your gum line. Your Park Ridge implant dentists, Dr. Maria and Dr. Thanasi Loukas, explore what tooth loss means for the foundation of your smile and why dental implants can be your oral health’s best friend if your smile falls short by one or more teeth.

What You Should Know About Tooth Loss

If you’ve already lost one or more teeth, then you’re probably familiar with the immediate effect that missing teeth have on your confidence as well as your mouth’s proper function. A dental bridge, partial, or full denture can typically restore that confidence and functionality by replacing the visible portions of your teeth, called crowns, although they neglect to replace the roots of your missing teeth. Embedded in your jawbone, healthy tooth roots help maintain your jawbone’s integrity by inviting an ample supply of nutrients for your jaw to sustain your teeth. The loss of these roots typically equates to a diminished nutrient supply, and in time, your jawbone’s structure can weaken, deteriorate, and lose its ability to retain the rest of your teeth.

The Scientific Art of Dental Implants

Dental implants don’t replace traditional replacement teeth. On the contrary, they improve your dental bridge or denture by providing a foundation mirrored after the structures of your natural teeth. As prosthetic tooth roots, dental implants are surgically inserted into your jawbone, which fuses to the biocompatible titanium implant as though the prosthetic were a natural part of your body. Once healed, your dental implant(s) can serve as the most formidable foundation for your new smile outside of your healthy, natural tooth roots, and can help replace the stimulation that your jawbone relies on for its nutrient supply.

Learn More from Your Park Ridge Implant Dentists

If you’ve lost one or more teeth and would like to learn your options for replacing them, or if you’d like to learn how dental implants can improve your current dental prosthetic, schedule an appointment with your Park Ridge implant dentists by calling Loukas General Dentistry at (847) 696-1919. Located in the 60068 area, we proudly serve patients from Park Ridge and the surrounding Chicago communities.