Dental Implants Can Help Keep Your Face Looking Young
How Dental Implants Can Prevent Facial Bone Loss and Wrinkles
If you’ve suffered tooth loss, you’re among millions of other people who have also dealt with this problem — mostly due to tooth decay, periodontal disease, or injury. When you lose one or more of your natural teeth, a variety of problems can extend beyond just a visible hole in your mouth. Tooth loss can affect not only the look of your smile, but also your ability to bite, chew, and speak. In fact, losing a tooth can cause serious problems due to what’s going on below the gumline.
Years of bone loss can collapse the lower third of your face, which creates excessive wrinkles, sagging skin, and jowls, thinning lips, and a sunken-in look with a “witches chin”. In other words, it can cause your face to prematurely age. Thankfully, that’s where dental implants come in.
Dr. Matt Walton receiving his Associate Fellow from the American Academy of Implant Dentistry.
The Difference With Dr. Walton
Dr. Walton is an Associate Fellow of the American Academy of Implant Dentistry and one of the only 877 dentists out of all 196,000 dentists in the USA to hold AAID credentials. He offers a wide range of dental implant (surgical and prosthetic) procedures, including single tooth implants, implants for dentures, hybrid implants, All-On-4 or 6, snap-in dentures, full arch implants, and full mouth reconstruction. To find out how Dr. Walton can help you keep your teeth and face looking and feeling young and healthy, contact our office today.
OR CALL (317) 885-7006 TO GET STARTED.
How Do Dental Implants Work?
When a tooth has been lost, a dental implant can serve as a replacement. They’re actually a replacement for the root or roots of a tooth, and they’re secured in the jawbone beneath the gum line. This allows Dr. Walton to mount replacement teeth or a bridge into that area. Not only does it fill that hole, but it comes with the added benefits of preventing bone loss and the shifting of teeth. Most often they’re made of titanium, which is lightweight, strong, and biocompatible, which means that the body will rarely reject it.
How Dental Implants Preserve Jaw Bone Loss
One of the most unfortunate consequences of premature tooth loss is the bone loss that goes along with that. Bone in the jaw deteriorates where there is no tooth, because the bone requires the pressure of chewing to maintain its density. Just like your muscles can atrophy and shrink when not used, the same thing happens to your jawbone. Moreover, once the bone is lost, it does not grow back on its own.
In the first year after losing a tooth, the bone where the tooth was loses 25% of its volume. As if that wasn’t bad enough, bone loss continues over the years — up to 60% after just three years!
Enter dental implants.
Implants act as natural teeth and provide the stimulation needed to maintain jaw bone volume. Thanks to the implant, the body is “tricked” into thinking that it’s a tooth root, and they not only prevent bone loss, but also stimulate growth. This keeps the bone, jaw, and facial structure intact.
Dental Implants Can Help Keep Your Face Looking Young
That’s important because when a person is missing many or all of their teeth, the face experiences many changes. For example, the height between the chin and the tip of the nose decreases, which causes the lower third of the face to sag and collapse. This also causes excess wrinkles around the mouth, sagging skin, dropped jowls, thinner lips, and a pointier chin (“witches chin”).
And wearing dentures only highlights the fine lines and wrinkles of the face, as they can contribute significantly to wrinkles if they don’t provide adequate support for your lower face. With dental implants, you not only prevent bone loss, but you can also prevent premature sagging and wrinkles of the face.
What are the Other Advantages of Dental Implants?
Along with the benefits mentioned above, there are also other advantages to getting a dental implant. These include:
The Process Of Dental Implants
Because dental implants require one or more different procedures, several steps are taken to complete the process, including:
Initial Consultation — First, you’ll meet with Dr. Walton for an initial consultation. Here your medical history will be reviewed to identify any factors that may affect your implant treatment and an examination of the area will be performed to ensure that a dental implant can be placed there. From here, Dr. Walton may gather any other necessary information, like models of your teeth, X-rays, or photographs. Then, after reviewing your findings, Dr. Walton will create a proposed surgical and prosthetic treatment plan.
Tooth Extraction — If the tooth in question still exists, it will need to be extracted. If there’s not enough high-quality bone in which to place the implant, a bone graft may need to be completed during this procedure. That means bone grafting material is placed into the socket, speeding up healing and improving the density of the newly-forming bone. Healing after an extraction and bone graft can take anywhere from 3-5 months before the dental implant is placed.
Implant Placement — After the tooth is extracted, space for the implant is created in the bone. This is a relatively painless procedure, and numbing medication is used to deaden the area. Next, the implant will be inserted into the space created in the bone, where it will serve as an artificial root for your new tooth. Eventually, the bone of your jaw will grow to the implant, fusing it into place — which usually takes a few weeks. Once Dr. Walton determines that the implant has healed sufficiently, he can begin the process of building a new tooth on your implant. This is usually after eight to 10 weeks.
Abutment and Crown Placement — After the implant has healed, an abutment is placed on top of it to serve as a connector between your implant and the new crown. The abutment is tightened with a tiny dental wrench so that it remains in place when you chew. The final step involves placing the permanent crown. This is either screwed into the implant and abutment, or cemented over the top of the abutment. The implant will then function like and can be maintained like a natural tooth. The crown must be brushed and flossed meticulously in order to ensure longevity.
