Dental implant surgery is one procedure that is often opted for when a natural tooth is lost for many reasons. One reason is that it helps to provide a chewing surface area where one may have gone missing, and this helps to correct any bite or pressure issues which may arise from the missing tooth area, and another is that an implant saves adjacent teeth from moving out of their correct position. When a natural tooth is lost, other natural teeth are compromised, and a dental implant helps to save these natural teeth from suffering loss as well.
A person’s teeth are what they use to chew, and the way our teeth are set up in our mouths gives us the ability to chew evenly on all of them. When chewing is uneven, this causes additional pressure to be placed on certain teeth, which can lead to tooth damage, so having all of your teeth is important to keeping your mouth as healthy as possible. When a tooth goes missing, other teeth will need to pick up the slack and chew for the tooth that is no longer present, causing unnecessary stress on these teeth which can lead to them becoming damaged. What an implant is able to provide is a way for this pressure to be evened out once again, as the natural chewing surface is replaced.
Also, as a tooth goes missing, other teeth will move to fill the gap. The root structure of a tooth keeps the place of the tooth, and when this is removed from the jawbone, adjacent teeth will begin to shift to take over the now vacant root area. As these teeth move, they can become loose or damaged, leading to their health being compromised, but this can be avoided with a dental implant. A dental implant procedure consists of fixing this vacant root area and placing a crown on the new artificial tooth root structure, giving your teeth a way to chew properly and stay in place.
At Shine, we often suggest dental implant surgery to our patients with missing teeth, as we find that this is the best way to save all of the teeth within the mouth from subsequent damage.
