What Are Dental Implants?

Dental implants are an increasingly popular tooth restoration that can fill in the gap in your smile, replenish lost jawbone, and look and feel as natural as real teeth. For this reason, many patients actively pursue this treatment for their tooth loss cases. But if this is your first time discovering dental implants, we invite you to read along and learn about how they are made, what makes them successful, and the benefits that patients have loved over the years.

Three Parts of the Implant

First, let’s take a look at the three pieces of the dental implants and how they work to form a singular implant.

• Titanium Fixture: The titanium fixture is the first piece to be embedded into the jawbone. It’s typically shaped like a screw and is surgically placed. After this, the gum is sealed over the fixture so that it has time to heal with little to no risk of infection.
• Abutment: After the fixture is mostly healed, the abutment is placed. This timble-like top is screwed into the fixture for security, and will later serve as the anchor to the coming restoration.
• Porcelain Crown: The crown, also known as the restoration, is what caps the whole implant, and is what the casual onlooker will see when you smile. The crown hides the metallic parts of the implant, and can be shaped and colored to blend into your smile like a real tooth.

How Does Osseointegration Work?

Osseointegration is not a common term that patients hear about their medical or dental treatments. It’s a specific term for the biological fusion process that occurs when human tissues come into contact with titanium materials. It’s for this reason that titanium is often used for medical and dental surgical procedures.

Back in the 1950s it was discovered by accident that organic tissues bonded positively with titanium, and this knowledge was later implemented into the dental and medical fields. When the titanium implant is placed into the jawbone, it triggers the surrounding bone to regenerate and wrap fibers around the implant. This secures the implant to the jawbone permanently, a reliable trait that’s not found with other restoration devices like dentures or bridges.

The Many Advantages of Implants

• Longevity: When compared to dentures or dental bridges, dental implants are permanently placed, allowing them to resist a lot of wear-and-tear that comes with the aforementioned dental devices.
• Natural Appearance: Dr. Forlano is dedicated to ensuring that your treatment looks and feels as natural as possible. We’ll shape and shade your restoration so that it blends into the rest of your smile seamlessly.
• Improved Speech: Tooth loss can definitely affect your natural speech patterns, so the application of dental implants can help restore how you speak naturally. Full dentures can possibly change how you speak, but dental implants are attached naturally.
• Comfortable Eating: Similar to how dental implants can help improve speech, these implants can also save you from embarrassing situations like food leaking out of your mouth through the gap in your smile.
• Better Oral Health: With dentures and bridges, there is little chance that the jawbone can recover underneath. This also leaves gaps open for possible infections. Dental implants fill the gap and can prompt the jawbone into regenerating.
• Durability: Dental implants are remarkably durable, especially when they are secured directly into the jawbone. They don’t shift around and actually prevent their neighboring teeth from shifting out of place.

Contact Us About Dental Implants in Suffolk County

You don’t need to live with tooth loss for the rest of your life and suffer through the consequences. Contact us as soon as possible to discover your candidacy for dental implants with Dr. David Forlano, and we’ll be happy to answer any and all questions you may have. What are you waiting for? Call us today!