Categories: Dental Implant Surgery

The Steps of Dental Implant Surgery

Dental implant surgery involves inserting implants into your jawbone tissue. The procedure counts as oral surgery, and it involves the use of anesthetics. Implants are one of the popular restorations used in dentistry thanks to their bone preserving properties. They serve as artificial teeth roots, and they can be fitted with restorations like implants, bridges and dentures.

What to expect with dental implant surgery

Dental implant surgery is not for everyone. Patients need to be healthy enough to recover from the surgical process, and their jawbone should be thick enough to hold implants in place. The dentist will go over any health issues a patient has, the medication they take for their condition and if they have habits like smoking.

Also, people who are interested in getting implants should be willing to wait several months to complete the process. It requires a lot of commitment on the patient’s part.

During the initial consultation, the dentist will evaluate the patient’s mouth using tools like x-rays and 3D images. The patient’s medical history will also be thoroughly evaluated before determining if they should be eligible for implants.

Installation

The installation of implants often requires multiple stages over the course of roughly six months. The dentist might remove an existing damaged tooth in preparation for an implant. Bone grafts might be performed if the patient’s jaw is not thick enough for implants. It can take up to three months to recover from bone grafts, and patients should be fully healed before proceeding with implants.

Here is what the process looks like:

The patient is given a shot of a local anesthetic to numb the area being worked on
A cut might be made into the patient’s gums to expose the jaw
A hole is drilled into the jaw and the implant is pushed into the hole. The bone tissues around the implant keep it in place
The implant might be covered with a healing cap and any cuts made will be sutured. The patient might be prescribed antibiotics to help prevent infection
The implant is given up to six months to fuse with bone tissues around it via osseointegration
Once the implant has bonded with bone tissues around it, the dentist might reopen the incision made to attach an abutment to the implant. The area is stitched up and a restoration might be attached to the abutment. In some cases, the patient might need to come in for a third time for a restoration to be attached to the implant

Benefits

The benefits of choosing implants over other teeth replacement options include:

Implants help to prevent the loss of bone tissues that typically occurs when teeth are lost
Implants do not require special maintenance
Implants are a permanent replacement for missing teeth that can last a lifetime
Implants prevent the remaining teeth from becoming misaligned as they try to close the space created by missing teeth