Dental Implants — Oak Cliff, TX

Initial Dental Implant Consultation

First, you’ll visit Dr. Martinez for a consultation. For dental implants to be successful, they require extensive planning before their surgical placement. This appointment gives Dr. Martinez the opportunity to examine your mouth and jaw, both with X-rays and his highly trained eyes, to get an idea of the current state of your oral health. He’ll also walk you through an outline of how your treatment will proceed from there. If you still have any questions about how dental implants work in Oak Cliff, your consultation would be the perfect time to ask!

Some patients might not quite be eligible for dental implants right off the bat. There’s a chance you’ll require one or more preliminary procedures, such as bone grafting to strengthen a jawbone that has deteriorated after tooth loss. We’ll go over what you can expect with these treatments, which will increase the chances of your implants lasting for a lifetime!

Dental Implant Surgery

When your mouth and jaw are ready to support dental implants, our team can schedule your surgery. This procedure is actually fairly straightforward and more comfortable than many of our patients expect. Dr. Martinez will numb the treatment area and create small incisions in the gums. He can then access your jawbone and insert the implant posts at precisely planned locations and angles. Lastly, he’ll seal up your gum tissue over the implants. He may place temporary restorations for you to use as you heal.

Dental Implant Osseointegration & Abutment Placement

Dental implants are made from biocompatible materials like titanium. Once they have been made, the body’s natural inclinations take over, and the jawbone begins fusing with the implant. This process, called osseointegration, is the reason why dental implants are able to deliver the longevity and reliability that they’re known for.

Osseointegration usually takes somewhere between four and six months. Afterward, you’ll come back to our office for your abutment placement procedure. Your implant dentist in Oak Cliff will reopen your gums and install the abutments – metal attachments that secure your restorations in place – on top of your implants. Recovering from this procedure takes another two weeks on average.

Delivery of Dental Implant Restorations

After you’ve fully healed from getting your abutments, it’s time for the moment you’ve been waiting for – getting your new pearly whites! Dr. Martinez will place a crown, bridge, or denture (depending on the number of teeth you’re missing) on top of your implants, which has been customized to look like your original teeth. Once this step is complete, you can finally begin enjoying your new smile to the fullest!

Day-to-Day Benefits

As you’d expect, the day-to-day benefits of dental implants are the most obvious ones. They include:

 

• A Gorgeous Grin – Since they’re capped with porcelain, dental implants match your other teeth in size, color, and shape. You can trust them to blend seamlessly with your smile.
• Higher Confidence – Dental implants boost your confidence by restoring your smile. From there, you’ll feel less anxious about your looks, speech, eating ability, etc.
• Better Eating – Due to fusing with your jaw, dental implants restore your bite’s strength after they’re placed. That means they’ll let you eat your favorite tough foods again.
• Easy Maintenance – You can clean and maintain dental implants like natural teeth. To care for them, just brush twice daily and floss (at least) once daily.

Health Benefits

Aside from their everyday perks, dental implants also have health benefits.  These advantages are:

 

• A Cleaner Mouth – Untreated smile gaps are breeding grounds for bacteria that cause tooth decay and gum disease. Luckily, dental implants fill these spaces to make your mouth healthier.
• Support for Teeth – Left to themselves, smile gaps will slowly tilt your remaining teeth till they fall out. Dental implants prevent that outcome when they’re placed.
• A Stronger Jaw – Tooth loss erodes your jaw when it goes untreated, leading to facial collapse and similar issues. The good news is that dental implants stop (and reverse) such erosion.
• Good Nutrition – Dental implants expand your dietary choices by restoring your bite. Through this wider range of meal options, they help you get crucial vitamins and minerals.

Long-term Benefits

Dental implants also have great long-term benefits if you take good care of them. The notable of those perks are:

 

• High Rate of Success – Dental implants almost always succeed in the long run, especially compared to other prosthetics. They even have a ten-year success rate of 98%!
• Long-Lasting Results – When successfully placed, dental implants tend to last a long time. An average implant post has a lifespan of 15-20 years, while a well-maintained one can work for more than 30 years!
• Cost-Effectiveness – Despite their high (upfront) price, dental implants save you money over time. Their long lifespans (see above) keep them from needing costly repair or replacement work.

Who Is a Good Candidate for Dental Implants?

If you want to be considered an ideal candidate for dental implants, you’ll need to have:

• Excellent oral health
• Great overall condition
• Sufficient jawbone mass or density

Even if you don’t have all of these factors at first, our dental team will typically help patients overcome obstacles that can stand between them and their dental implant procedure. We might recommend other preliminary treatments to make sure your restorations will have the highest success rate, including gum disease therapy or a bone graft. Once we’ve addressed any concerns and have you back on track with good oral health, we’ll develop a specific dental implant treatment plan regarding the number of missing teeth.

Missing One Tooth

For people missing a single tooth, this metal post can be used to hold up a custom-made all-porcelain dental crown. This single-tooth restoration will be much more reliable than a traditional one, like a dental bridge, which will require altering the remaining healthy teeth on either side of the gap. This can cause the supporting pearly whites to become weaker than before. Instead, a dental implant will stimulate the jawbone, promoting a stronger foundation for the rest of the smile while also preventing further tooth loss. The restoration will be specially shaded to match a patient’s enamel color, and with regular brushing and flossing, an implant can easily be trusted to last for 30 years or more.

Missing Multiple Teeth

Implants can also be used to support a dental bridge to replace multiple consecutive missing teeth. Implant bridges, compared to traditional ones, not only look more natural but can be trusted to last much longer as well. And they also don’t require healthy teeth to be cut down to stay in place. Instead, two implant crowns are positioned on either side of the missing ones, and these are bonded to prosthetic teeth that fill in the space.

Missing All Teeth

Do you have a denture that you can never trust to stay in place? Then dental implants may be exactly what your smile needs. With implant-retained dentures, the teeth are anchored directly to the jawbone using multiple posts to create a stable and secure hold a traditional prosthetic simply can’t match. Plus, implant dentures have also been shown to restore much more of a patient’s bite strength, enabling them to enjoy a more varied (and inevitably healthier) diet with ease.

Can I Brush My Dental Implant Like a Natural Tooth?

Not only do dental implants look, feel, and function just like natural teeth, but they can be cared for just as easily as well! You won’t need to use any special cleaning products or make any changes to your daily dental routine. To keep your dental implant clean and the tissues that help hold it in place healthy, be sure to practice healthy habits like:

• Brushing your teeth for two minutes twice a day.
• Flossing between all your teeth daily.
• Rinsing with antiseptic mouthwash regularly.