Call us on About Dental Implants
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Close call back requestWhat is a dental implant
A dental implant is essentially an artificial tooth root which can support a crown, a bridge, or a denture. The implant is made of pure titanium which, for reasons still unknown today, will integrate (or osseointegrate) with the bone so that the implant and crown then act like a tooth. The technique avoids the need to wear a removable denture and feels part of the mouth as the original tooth used to do.
The implant is screw-shaped and is placed either into the socket of a recently-removed tooth or into a hole made within the bone by the surgeon. After a period of around six weeks the bone will have grown directly onto the surface of the implant-this is the fundamental process of Dental Implantology. The next stage is to attach a small cylinder to the top of the implant (called a healing abutment) to allow the gum to heal around this and then impressions are taken and a crown made to fit onto the top. The implant and crown thus resembles the root and crown of a natural tooth.
Have Implants been around for a long time?
The discovery that bone would grow directly onto Titanium was made in 1952 by a team or orthopaedic surgeons including Professor Per-Ingvar Brånemark. He noticed that when titanium screws were inserted into laboratory rabbits to observe growth changes they could not be removed after the experiments were finished. This led to the invention of dental implants and the first scientific paper documenting the use of implants in dentistry was published in 1957.
What is the scope of dental implants?
Every type of tooth-replacement dentistry (also called prosthetic dentistry) can be performed using dental implants as a more successful alternative. One implant can replace a single tooth, a few implants can support a bridge replacing more teeth or a full mouth of lost teeth can be restored using implants to carry either a fixed bridge or a removable denture. It is actually possible to attach implants to natural teeth to carry a bridge replacing lost teeth.
The number of implants needed to replace many teeth depends upon a number of factors including both the amount of bone available and the type of bone. In the upper jaw six implants can support an entire arch of teeth and in the lower jaw as few as four implants is sometimes satisfactory to support a full-arch bridge.
Where and when is it useful or what else can be done with dental implants?
Implants and Mini Implants can be used in smaller numbers to support and stabilise removable dentures to great effect. Patients often describe how the placement of implants under a denture has changed their life because a difficulty in chewing and talking can be very depressing and a stabilised denture allows eating of whatever is desired and speaking in public without fear of the denture moving.
Sometimes an implant can be place directly into the socket of the tooth after extraction or traumatic loss and a crown can similarly be fitted at the same appointment. The “Immediate” technique is not suitable in every case but is very useful and convenient-no provisional denture is required.
Read more on dental implant treatment 
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