Replacing your lost teeth is the only way to restore your ability to bite and chew, and modern prosthetic dentistry offers a number of choices for rebuilding your smile. However, dental implants are the only restorations that can replace your lost teeth’s roots and the functions they provide that help preserve your smile’s integrity. Made from biocompatible titanium, dental implants are surgically inserted into your jawbone, and your jawbone fuses to the implants as though they were genuine teeth roots. The benefits of dental implants are many, as are the reasons why you should choose to support your dental prosthetic on the root devices.
Save Your Healthy Teeth from a Dental Bridge
Before dental implants, the standard for replacing a single lost tooth, or several of them in a row, was with a dental bridge. As the name suggests, a dental bridge closes the gap in your smile with an appropriate number of replacement teeth, which are situated between two dental crowns. Each crown is affixed to one of the teeth adjacent to the gap (abutment teeth) to support the bridge, and abutment teeth have to be modified to accommodate the crowns. Placing your dental bridge on one or more dental implants eliminates the need for supportive dental crowns, allowing Dr. Loukas to leave your healthy teeth undisturbed.
Say Goodbye to Denture Slippage
Dental implants save your teeth from more than becoming abutments. As far as your body’s concerned, supporting your teeth is your jawbone’s most important function. The roots of your teeth rest in sockets within your jawbone, and they tell your body to send your jaw nutrients whenever they’re stimulated by biting and chewing. If you lose one, then your body sends fewer minerals and nutrients to your jawbone, causing it to gradually shrink (resorb) from the deficiency. Patients who’ve worn dentures for a while may be familiar with jawbone deterioration, which causes them to periodically readjust or replace their ill-fitting dentures to accommodate their changing dental ridges. Years after you’ve lost your teeth’s roots, jawbone deterioration can become physically apparent in the form of facial collapse—the shrunken appearance that plagues many tooth-loss patients’ jaws in their later years.
About Your Park Ridge Dentists:
Dr. Maria and Dr. Thanasi Loukas are highly-skilled restorative, cosmetic, and implant dentists serving the Park Ridge and surrounding Chicago communities. To schedule an appointment, call Loukas General Dentistry today at (847) 696-1919.