The Options for Placing Dental Implants

At Dr Rodriguez DMD, Dental implants are a tiny prosthetic device that can make a huge impact on your life if you have lost a tooth. With tooth loss come a change in lifestyle, which includes having to change your diet and negative effects on your speech pattern. Dental implants can reverse the clock on this by taking the place of the most vital part of the tooth, in terms of stability and strength. The root. Not only does the root provide a stability to the tooth, it also has a symbiotic relationship with the jawbone to ensure the tooth has strength and longevity. A dental implant is designed to perfectly mimic the root, giving us the perfect way to attach a dental crown to the implant, so that you have a tooth that looks and responds the same way as a naturally occurring tooth.

The most important thing, from a patient’s perspective, is the convenience of the dental implants. Once the implant has been installed, you can go back to eating and drinking the same foods as you would with your natural teeth. Additionally there is no need for special cleaning since implants are closest to natural teeth. All you have to do to clean them is brush and floss like normal.

Popular culture has made dental implants far more popular that they have ever been in their long history. People today want to have permanent solutions to some of the problems, and having a way to replace teeth with this solution has caught the attention of the general public. Because of this there is a lot of information about dental implants out on the internet. This is good and bad. It is bad because very often patients do not have a complete idea of what implants are and may form opinions without knowing all the pros and cons. It is good because it allows us to focus on your goals so that the dental implants can help you achieve those.

There are two kinds of dental implants that we use extensively. Dr Rodriguez DMD selects which ones to use on a particular patient based on the density of the jawbone and its ability to withstand the implant itself. As mentioned earlier the jawbone and the implant must have a symbiotic relationship if the implant is going to do its job.

Typically Dr Rodriguez DMD will use what is known as an Endosteal dental implant. This implant is cylindrical in shape and is placed directly into the jawbone. Made of titanium, these dental implants are often a tiny screw for easy insertion into the jaw. Sometimes, however, a patient may not have the necessary jaw bone density to withstand the implant. In such cases, we can either perform a jaw restoration or we can use another type of implant. Known as a Subperiosteal implant, these implants are not placed directly into the jawbone. Rather they are placed on top of the jawbone, or slightly above the bone itself. This allows for the same level of stability but without placing undue pressure on a bone that is already weakened.