Dental Implants
Top Rated Dentist for Dental Implants in St Joseph, MO.
Dental implants are used to replace teeth with artificial teeth. They have been used in their most modern iteration successfully for over 30 years in the dental industry. Dental implants are considered hugely successful because they can replicate the look, feel, and mechanical use of teeth to what we have grown accustomed to functioning naturally. More than 5 million implants are placed by dentists in the United States every year. That is over 13,000 implants per day. This means that the procedure is widely regarded as a safe and reliable procedure to replace teeth.
Implants are made up of three pieces. The parts that are connected to the jawbone are made up of titanium. This metal has a special relationship with natural bone. Titanium is accepted by the body, which allows it to grow in conjunction with the bone rather than being rejected like other metals. We can thank Per-Ingvar Branemark, a Swedish physician turned dentist for this discovery. He is considered the father of modern implants. Early in his career, Dr. Branemark was studying how blood flow affects the process of bone healing.
Top Rated Dentist in St Joseph, MO.
By a happy accident, the team discovered that titanium and bone had a natural affinity for one another and will fuse together with time. It is this relationship that defines the use of titanium in a dental implant. Despite this discovery, it took a long time before large health organizations would consider the truth of this but eventually became common knowledge. Titanium is excellent because it is resistant to bacteria. It is as strong as steel while being almost half the weight. Because of Dr. Branemark’s discovery, titanium is now the metal of choice for prosthetics, internal fixation, inner body devices, and instrumentation. The metal is also found in biomedical implants from head to toe.
The fusing of titanium and bone is called osseointegration (OSS-e-o-in-te-GRAY-shun). As the jawbone forms and heals around the post, it is providing a stable, reliable, and sturdy base for the implant. The implants are often made to imitate natural-looking teeth and blend in with the rest of the teeth. If multiple teeth are needed, implants can be fitted with bridges or dentures. The tops of these are mounted onto the top part of the titanium implant, which is called an abutment. The abutment will then have a cementing process or a mechanical fit to the piece that looks and functions like a tooth, otherwise known as the crown.
Implants are considered successful because the body can adapt to them, and function more reliably than previous iterations of dentures. It can provide both cosmetic benefits as well as impact health and wellness. Dentures limited the kind of food that could be ingested, or could lead to embarrassing fits of teeth flying out at the drop of a sneeze. While dentures have been vital to the progress of dentistry, implants are the new front running choices for replacing teeth and providing years of benefits.