Dental implants can be used to:
When you lose a tooth, several negative things may happen. Aesthetics and chewing ability may be lost and teeth may start drifting.
Replacing a missing tooth not only helps to prevent the collapse of your bite, it replaces form, function and aesthetics and brings about harmony to your dentition.
There are three ways that you can use to replace missing teeth:
To make a bridge, adjacent teeth need to be prepared by grinding them down. This may lead to sensitivity and in certain teeth, a root canal procedure may be necessary.
Dental implants, on the other hand, do not require any modification to the adjacent teeth thereby preserving natural tooth structure.
People wearing dentures ofter complain of the dentures being loose while eating or speaking and this can lead to embarrasing situations.
With just a few implants your dentures can be secured so that such a situation can be easily prevented and so that you can chew your food with comfort and ease.
The first implants was placed more than 50 years ago and it has functioned successfully to this day. There should be no reason that the implant shouldn't last you a lifetime as long as you maintain them daily and have them checked periodically.
Just as in healthy teeth, implants will stay healthy in healthy mouth.
In the rare case of a failure, most implants have a lifetime guarantee for free component replacement.