Dental Implants aren't Just for Professional Athletes

Oct 19
07:35

2011

Andrew Stratton

Andrew Stratton

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Dental implants are not just for the professional athlete even though they are a great way to replace teeth that are knocked out due to a traumatic event like a contact sport.

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It is not unusual for athletes to lose their teeth due to a traumatic injury while participating in a sporting event. Hockey for example is considered one of the rougher contact sports with a reputation for being both fast paced and dangerous and many professional hockey players have lost teeth in the course of their careers to prove it.

If you follow hockey you can probably name a dozen players off the top of your head that have taken a stick or puck to their face and lost a tooth in the process. Eric Belanger the forward for the Washington Capitals is a great example of a player who lost eight teeth in one hit when he was knocked by an opponent's hockey stick in a recent game.

Belanger is also a great example of someone who is an ideal candidate for dental implants because he is young,Dental Implants aren't Just for Professional Athletes Articles healthy and suffered a loss of multiple teeth which were shattered inside his mouth instantly.

There are no age restrictions for implants but this is an especially appealing option for younger patients such as Belanger, who don't want to go through the rest of a potentially long life either being toothless or using temporary fixes such as bridges or dentures. Bridges and dentures can wear down your jaw bone and your oral health can quickly decline and lead to problems such as thrush mouth which is caused by improper oral health care habits. In contrast surgically implanted teeth allow patients to avoid long term problems that are associated with short term solutions i.e. bridges or dentures.

Dental implants offer patients a permanent solution to tooth loss and look just like your natural teeth which is a plus to younger patients such as Belanger who don't necessarily want to look like they are wearing false teeth decades before they should have lost their natural teeth due to age or decay.

Most professional hockey players will wait until after they retire before they utilize a permanent tooth replacement option because of the high likely hood of being hit in the face by a puck or stick again and losing the replacement, but for the average person this procedure is a good solution with no time restrictions.

In other words even if you lost a tooth a year ago you can still explore the option for dental implants now. Unlike the process of replacing your natural tooth, where there is a small window of opportunity to save the tooth- a surgically implanted tooth can be put in at any time regardless of when the loss occurred.

The only requirements to be a viable candidate for this procedure is to have a good jaw bone density and to be a nonsmoker, since both of these factors are at the root of the success or failure of surgery. The entire process from start to finish requires three separate surgeries spaced out over the course of six months but the results, unless you are hit by a hockey pock, are permanent.