Dental Implants

Single Dental Implants

Dental implants are able to support a variety of restorations in the mouth, including bridges, dentures and crowns. As they’re surgically placed into your jawbone, they help it to maintain its volume in areas where teeth have been lost. We love dental implants, as they’re the undisputed top treatment for tooth replacement as they help us to provide a fixed solution to replacing missing teeth without putting any extra stress any other teeth.

Single dental implants: the process

We will first establish whether or not you have sufficient healthy jawbone to support a dental implant. Very often bone grafting crystals and techniques are used to help enhance the bone around where the implant is planned to be placed.

A carefully crafted treatment plan is central to the success of dental implants. We’re meticulous here at Crown Bank, leaving no stone unturned when planning your treatment. Using state-of-the-art technology, we can reach a predictable outcome by taking digital photos and 3-Dimensional X-rays to gain a complete picture of your oral health and oral anatomy before treatment starts.

Your implant is placed under local anaesthetic and left to heal for several months. We will create your restoration using the diagnostic information we collected when planning your treatment, so you can expect an authentic-looking result that fits in with the context of your whole smile. The restoration is then placed over your implant once your bone has knitted around the implant.

If we find that you have insufficient bone volume when considering dental implant treatment , don’t worry. There are solutions in the form of procedures such as a bone grafting and a sinus lift that help you to accommodate the safe and predictable placement of dental implants. Using our state-of-the-art CBCT (Cone Beam Computed Tomography) scanner, we can pinpoint exactly where you’re lacking healthy bone and take action to move your dental implants journey forwards

Dental Implant Solutions

Reasons for Jawbone Loss

• The jawbone has gone through the process of resorption (shrunk away) due to tooth loss. When you lose a tooth, the jawbone at the site of the lost tooth becomes redundant and begins to shrink away. Dental implants give the jawbone a reason to get back to work, as they fuse together with the jawbone, which accepts it as a brand-new tooth root.
• The jawbone has shrunk away due to wearing removable denture for many years. Dentures don’t involve the placement of implants, so they won’t solve the issue of the jawbone not receiving the stimulation it needs to stay healthy and abundant.
• Loss of jawbone due to a dental infection.
• Loss of bone height overtime because of advanced gum disease.
• Genetic reasons for jawbone loss because of the natural size and shape of your jaw.
• Large sinuses that result in insufficient bone in the back areas of the upper jaw for implant placement.

Bone Graft

It’s possible to use your own bone, donor bone or synthetic bone to reconstruct the bone in the jaw, so that dental implants treatment can go ahead. Once the native bone begins to grow after a bone graft has been performed, it will replace the graft material, making way for a fully integrated portion of new bone.

Sinus Lift

Sinuses are the natural air spaces of our upper jaws. We can perform a sinus lift to raise the lining of the sinus, to create room for the growth of new bone, once a bone graft has been performed. This then makes it possible to place dental implants.

FAQs

What is a dental implant?

Dental implants are titanium screws that act as replacement tooth roots. A fixed or removable restoration like a crown, bridge or dentures can then be attached over the top of the implant, to improve your function and aesthetics.

Does getting a dental implant hurt?

As the process is performed under local anaesthetic, you won’t feel anything while the implant is being placed.

It’s completely normal to experience some discomfort for a couple of days after the procedure, which is well controlled with over-the-counter (OTC) painkillers. If you’re at all worried about any pain after the procedure, please get in touch with us.

Will my dental implant last forever?

With the right care, dental implants have the potential to last your whole life. Problems like poor oral hygiene, smoking and gum disease can threaten the life of your implant, so it’s incredibly important that you attend dentist and hygienist appointments on a regular basis.

In some very rare cases, implants can fail. However, the success rate is 95% making them a viable option in the majority of cases.

The restoration sitting over the top of your implant (crown, bridge or dentures), may require replacement or maintenance, just like a real tooth might.

What does a dental implant feel like?

One of the primary reasons dental implants are thought of as the best mode of tooth replacement, is because they bear the closest resemblance to real teeth. Whilst your restoration might feel a bit different when it’s first placed over the top of your implant, you will quickly acclimatise to its presence. Smiling, chewing and speaking naturally will become second nature.