Dental Implants

Teeth replaced with dental implants offer a more natural look and feel for the patient. As the implant fuses with the bone in the jaw, the prosthesis is securely anchored with no chance of embarrassing movement of the replacement teeth. With dental implants, your teeth look, feel and function in a healthy and stronger manner.

Due to this enhanced anchorage offered by dental implants, patients develop improved confidence that they would not necessarily attain from a removable prosthesis (no need for messy adhesives). With dental implants, a person can feel secure that their teeth will not move. There are no limits to your activities for fear of embarrassment of your denture moving.

Because your implant supported replacement teeth are not resting directly on the tissue of your mouth, you don’t develop uncomfortable sore spots. On the other hand, removable dentures can cause inflammation of the mouth tissues that are under the denture itself, primarily if not removed every night when sleeping and if not cleaned on a daily basis

Keeping your teeth helps to preserve your jaw bones. Once a tooth is lost, one of the major problems that face dentists that treat edentulous patients is the continuing loss of jaw bone. The result of all this bone loss over time is that removable dentures start fitting less and less well. As the tissue under the denture starts to shrink and pull away from the underside of the denture, it leaves less and less support underneath the removable prosthesis. This is when all the problems associated with an ill-fitting denture start to show. Dental implants, like natural teeth, help to stimulate bone growth. One of the most fascinating and important properties of titanium, the material from which dental implants are made, is that it attracts the growth of bone cells.

Due to the lack of permanent anchorage, removable dentures can move or slip  while eating, therefore making eating a difficult and less than desirable task. The ability to chew foods improves dramatically with dental implants.

A complete upper removable denture covers the entire roof of the mouth. Your tongue and the roof of your mouth are covered with thousands of tiny taste buds. Once the roof of the mouth is covered with the removable denture, food becomes less easy to taste, more difficult to sample and enjoy. With an implant-supported prosthesis, the roof of the mouth is not covered and food can be tasted by all the taste receptors in the mouth.

With proper care, implants can be the best long term solution.

Removable dentures can slip and slide around in the mouth. A complete, upper denture, and some designs of upper partial dentures, cover the roof of the mouth. Both can result in interference with the normal phonetic movements of the tongue, causing difficulty in normal speech. Implant supported teeth normalize speech and allow the person to regain confidence when speaking in social settings.

Digestion begins in the mouth. Teeth subject food to the mechanical process of grinding, breaking it down into smaller and smaller pieces. Almost simultaneous with the  smelling and chewing of food, saliva secretes onto and mixes with it. The enzymes in the saliva begin the further digestive breakdown of food. Now, if the step of mastication (grinding) of food were to be reduced due to inefficiency of a removable denture, the digestive process would be altered and food would not get properly digested further along the digestive tract. This improper digestion directly leads to fewer vital nutrients being absorbed later on in the digestive system. Nutritional balance is further indirectly enhanced by the stability of an implant-supported prosthesis. As one is more confident to enjoy a varied and healthy diet, and you are not restricted to what you can eat due to unstable removable dentures, then overall nutritional balance of the person is improved.

Digestion begins in the mouth. Teeth subject food to the mechanical process of grinding, breaking it down into smaller and smaller pieces. Almost simultaneous with the  smelling and chewing of food, saliva secretes onto and mixes with it. The enzymes in the saliva begin the further digestive breakdown of food. Now, if the step of mastication (grinding) of food were to be reduced due to inefficiency of a removable denture, the digestive process would be altered and food would not get properly digested further along the digestive tract. This improper digestion directly leads to fewer vital nutrients being absorbed later on in the digestive system. Nutritional balance is further indirectly enhanced by the stability of an implant-supported prosthesis. As one is more confident to enjoy a varied and healthy diet, and you are not restricted to what you can eat due to unstable removable dentures, then overall nutritional balance of the person is improved.

Removable dentures can easily be misplaced and lost. There are ample stories of domestic pets ‘eating’ the patients prosthesis (dogs and cats are attracted to the saliva that coats the prosthesis. However, with a fixed, implant-supported prosthesis , your likelihood of loss is next to nil.