Dental Implants – What do They do?
A dental implant is an artificial tooth root. It holds an artificial tooth, otherwise known as a crown. Before you recoil from false images of metal crowns, dental surgery and drills, consider these comforting facts.
Dentistry has come a long way since our grandparents plodded to the dentist for their root canals and extractions. It has certainly come a long way since medieval days when your local barber threw in a few extra services like applying leeches and pulling teeth.
Computers and lasers have changed dentistry out of sight. The pain and trauma is gone, replaced by comfort and beauty. A modern cosmetic dentist, in a friendly spa-like setting, can save your damaged teeth in many ways, using pearly-white porcelain that nobody but a dentist can distinguish from your real teeth. You can have all-porcelain crowns, veneers, inlays, and onlays – a mouthful of porcelain that looks, feels and functions like normal teeth.
Lost a tooth?
In the rare instance where a tooth cannot be saved, or in cases where a tooth is lost in an accident or trauma, not to worry – modern dentists can fill that gap and you’ll never have to wear a denture or put up with a bridge.
What if you don’t replace it?
They say Nature abhors a vacuum. In the dental world, teeth and bones abhor a gap. They will fill it somehow. A gap left by a lost tooth will invite neighboring teeth to move and fill it. A gap left by a lost tooth root will cause the jawbone to shrink inward and fill it.
Given a bit of time, you then have a dental nightmare scenario:
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