Before and After Care for Lifetime Dental Implant Success

Hands down, dental implants are amongst the biggest advancement dentistry has ever seen. Dental implants are the best when it comes to restoring teeth that were seemingly gone forever. A growing solution, dental implants already are making millions of people’s lives much easier by improving their ability to chew, speak and smile. However, dental implants do come with their own challenges. We like to show you the importance of taking care of your dental implants following the procedure.

Before we go any further, you must understand the difference between dental implants and your natural teeth. See, dental implants aren’t made up of the same material natural teeth are. They don’t have a pulp and they don’t have a feeble line of enamel protecting itself. Instead, dental implants consist of three parts. The first part is the implant post, a titanium alloy screw that joins the jawbone through osseointegration. Next is the abutment, which acts as a bridge between the implant post through the gumline and to the crown, the part we see in our mouth which mirrors the appearance of a natural tooth down to its color and shade.

Keeping up with Oral Hygiene is Important

One of the benefits of getting a dental implant is that, unlike natural teeth, dental implants are unable to form cavities. Enamel is what makes natural teeth susceptible to cavities. However, this doesn’t mean you can slack off when it comes to taking care of your teeth after getting dental implants. The implant’s health directly responds to the health of the tissue keeping it taut. With that in mind, it’s important to know in your mouth, there’s thousands of bacteria that try to bury their way into your gums on a persistent basis.

Improper oral hygiene, or lack of allows bacterial biofilm to form around your dental implants, just like it does with any natural teeth. While this can problem is easily avoidable with brushing and flossing before and after bedtime, many neglect to do so. This happens all too many times with people who have lifestyles that don’t ask of them to take care of their teeth. In such cases, an infection known as peri-implantitis develops around the gum of the implant and causes inflammation plus more. One of the up and downs of peri-implantitis is that while it’s not painful, it’s hard to note any symptoms before your dental implant one day loosens up or completely falls out.

To prevent dental implant failure, make sure to give it the care it needs, the same your natural teeth demands. Be sure to brush and floss thoroughly every day, twice a day for great results. Don’t forget to schedule biannually a dentist appointment so a hygienist can go ahead and remove any hardened biofilm.

Eliminate any Risk Factors in Your Life

In almost all cases, the dentist will go over how your lifestyle will have to be like once you have a dental implant. There’s many risk factors that come into play whether or not your dental implants keep up with their own health.

Smoking. In this day and age we know the harmful effects on smoking to the body, to the brain and especially to the mouth. If the reason you are in need of a dental implant in the first place is because of your smoking habits, now is the time to quit. You’ll never become a candidate for dental implants if you’re an avid smoker, as the toxic chemicals eat away at your gums and accelerates implantitis and other diseases. Quitting will open up an avenue to dental implants, which are outright better than dentures and other missing tooth solutions available.

Another hot topic is diabetes. While in most cases diabetes shouldn’t inhibit your ability to have a dental implant, severe diabetes can prevent one from bonding to the jawbone through osseointegration. This deters the entire purpose of a dental implant, especially if it’s unable to stay in place over time. If you have Diabetes, be sure to bring it up with the dentist so that they can prescribe further care to help you get ready for a dental implant and life with one.