Can you imagine eating with a missing tooth? For many, this is reality. Tooth loss is a marker of poor oral and, many would say, systemic health and well-being. The effects of losing teeth include:
- Inability or reduced ability to eat effectively. This can lead to nutritional problems.
- Self-confidence issues due to appearance of missing teeth and associated furrowing of skin folds in one’s face due to loss of facial tissue support.
- Deterioration of adjacent teeth due to overloading of the remaining teeth.
Regular dental examination and professional cleaning of teeth and associated tissues coupled with effective and regular toothbrushing and flossing are essential to prolong the life of natural teeth and restored teeth. At Family Dentistry of Frisco in Frisco, Texas, we offer comprehensive preventive and diagnostic services that will allow our dentist, Dr. Paresh Patel, and our team to help you keep your teeth healthy and in function for many years to come.
When for any reason you do lose a tooth, what are your options for replacement? Well, there are a myriad of options to replace missing teeth whether it be dental bridges, dental implants, dentures, etc. Many factors affect which options are right for you:
- How many teeth are missing?
- Where in the mouth are the missing teeth?
- What is the status of your systemic health?
- What is the status of your remaining teeth, gums and bone?
Let us first discuss single tooth loss. The most common type of tooth loss is a single tooth. This can be due to decay, infection or trauma. When you visit Dr. Patel at Family Dentistry of Frisco in Frisco, Texas, we use state-of-the-art techniques to assess and diagnose your condition. The use of cone beam tomography or CT scanning is now well established as the standard of care in assessing the detailed anatomy of the area in which you have lost the tooth. At Family Dentistry of Frisco, we have offered CT scanning as a standard of care for over a decade and are pleased to be a leading Frisco, Texas, implant dentist. Our team is skilled in both the surgical placement of the dental implant and the restoration of the tooth upon the implant.
Once our dentist, Dr. Patel, carries out a CT scan, he will discuss the case with you in detail and recommend the best options for you. A dental implant is a titanium root form that is inserted into the bone. Over time, your body grows bone onto the surface of the implant in a process called osseointegration.
Platelet-rich plasma (PRP) is used to extract the growth factors present in one’s own blood. At Family Dentistry of Frisco, we routinely use PRP to allow predictable healing after dental implant surgery. We have found that the use of PRP reduces postoperative pain and accelerates healing in surgical sites.
At Family Dentistry of Frisco, we will provide a comprehensive review of your medical and dental history, and we offer intravenous conscious sedation (IV sedation). This form of sedation allows our Board Certified sedation dentist, Dr. Paresh Patel, to keep you comfortable and pain-free throughout the implant placement procedure.
The predictability of dental implant therapy is dependent upon the planning of the procedure. It is not always possible or prudent to remove a tooth and place a dental implant immediately. When teeth have been lost previously to coming to Family Dentistry of Frisco, there may be a deficiency of bone in the area that needs to be restored. In such cases, after a CT scan analysis, Dr. Patel may advise a bone or tissue graft to regenerate the lost anatomy in the area to be restored. This is done to create sufficient depth and thickness of bone for the predictable placement of the dental Implant.
The process of healing around a dental implant is dependent upon many factors. The age, previous medical history and previous dental history are some of the many factors that affect healing times. At Family Dentistry of Frisco, the use of blood growth factors (i.e, PRP and PRF) have allowed us to reduce healing times and postoperative pain. Osseointegration of a dental implant will take two to three months.
At Family Dentistry of Frisco, you will come back for appointments to review your healing process, and Dr. Patel will use a device to measure the ISQ value of your dental implant. This is a method that allows us to objectively determine when the process of healing has reached a level that is safe.
Once your implant has healed, you will have an appointment where Dr. Patel and our team at Family Dentistry of Frisco will use digital scanning to scan the position of your implant and the adjacent teeth and tissues. This scan will be used to design a custom abutment and crown for your dental implant. The abutment is the component that connects the implant to the crown that is seen in your mouth. At Family Dentistry of Frisco, we do not use stock (general or standard) abutments. The best way to restore a dental implant is with a custom abutment designed via CAD/CAM and milled to exact design parameters. Research has shown that the use of custom abutments increases the life of a dental implant and allows patients to maintain better dental hygiene.
Once your custom abutment and crown are received, they will be placed upon your dental implants, and you will be ready to smile again.
In this brief article, we discussed tooth loss and the provision of dental implants. At Family Dentistry of Frisco, Dr. Paresh Patel and our team offer many options for dental implants in Frisco, Texas, including whole-arch solutions with implant-retained dentures and implant-retained ceramic restorations that remain in your mouth and do not need to be removed. Every case is different, and it is important to have a comprehensive assessment and discuss the options available to you. We look forward to seeing you at our Frisco premier dental implant center, where your smile is truly our passion.
