Implant
Dentistry

It's important to know that implants are never going to be as good as a natural tooth. An implant doesn't have the soft tissue. Your gums don't connect to an implant the same way that they do a normal tooth. So, it's never going to look as nice as a normal tooth. You're always going to have deficiencies in the gums around the crown, and it's not going to be as comfortable. It's going to get food caught in there more than a natural tooth. It doesn't feel like a natural tooth. It doesn't have a ligament, so it doesn't have the natural cushion that your normal tooth does, and it doesn't look as good as a natural tooth.

Implant dentistry has come a very long way. So, we can get very close. And if you're missing your tooth already, it's the best option if you can to replace a tooth and we can make it very comfortable, very aesthetic, very functional, but it will never be quite as good as a real tooth. And the reason I say this is because a lot of the times people think that, you know, like, oh, I'm just having problems with my teeth. I should just get them all removed. Like, you really shouldn't. It's not going to be the same. If you can save your tooth, you should.

Sometimes we'll have conversations with patients because they broke a tooth pretty severely and they came to us because they were told somewhere else they needed an implant. And a lot of the times we can save the tooth. We always tell them this is the best option. It's possible it breaks further down the line and it's possible you need an implant sometime in your life on this tooth, but the longer you can prolong it, the better because around an implant, you're going to have bone loss year over year. It's always going to happen. The rate of it can be very slow if it's a healthy implant, but you will have bone loss, and implants don't last forever. So the longer you can save your natural tooth, even if you're going to eventually need an implant, the better.

In general, implants are screwed into the bone and then they need to heal and the bone actually fuses to the implant. The screw structure of an implant is only for initial stability, to make it tight for the first week. After that, after a couple of weeks, the bone starts to fuse to it, and that's now what's holding the implant in — not the screw structure anymore, but the bone that's fused to the titanium.

Usually at about 3 months after you place an implant, it's going to be fully ready to work and have a crown. Sometimes you can do it faster, sometimes slower, depending on bone condition, grafting, sinus lifts, gum grafting, and other factors. Implants can be a single tooth, a bridge, or they can support dentures — either snapping onto dentures or holding a full arch. We even use mini implants in orthodontics to move teeth in specific ways.