What Patients Need To Learn About Dental Implants
Posted on: 15 January 2019
Learning that a dental implant services practice may be able to help you deal with the gaps in your smile can fill you with a sense of hope. Before you get involved with the process of putting in implants, though, it's a good idea to have some understanding of it. Here's what you should ask about when you conduct your consultation with the dentist.
Not Everyone Is a Candidate
One of the biggest challenges in assembling a dental implant treatment plan is establishing whether the patient's mouth is in good enough condition for implants to be done. The chief concern a doctor will have is whether or not the underlying bone structure has atrophied to the point there's nothing to graft the implant into. Secondly, there may be concerns about dental oral infections.
Practitioners strongly prefer to get implants done as close to the time initial extractions were performed as possible. This ensures that bone atrophy has limited time to occur, and the patient is also typically already on a course of antibiotics from when their extractions were performed.
There Are Many Kinds of Procedures
While you might think of a dental implant as just being a replacement for a single tooth, there are many other available solutions. Folks who've lost a number of teeth in a row may be candidates for dental implant bridges. This approach involves using an implanted post at one end and a health tooth at the other end as anchors for a bridge. Doctors often recommend this to folks who have lost all their rear teeth and are not candidates for traditional bridges.
The logic of the dental implant bridge can be taken a step further for those who've had all of their upper or lower teeth removed. All-on-four implants use four posts that act as anchors for two sets of upper or lower teeth. An arch that accounts for half the teeth for one side is then mounted on top of two of the posts, and a set of two arches over four posts in total will replace all the teeth that have been lost. Some practitioners even prefer to perform all-on-four implants the same day they perform extractions.
Costs
A dental implant treatment is fundamentally a form of oral surgery, and the costs reflect that. A single tooth may go as low as $1,000, but most implant procedures range from $3,500 to $10,000.
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