Multiple Tooth Implant
Milwaukie, OR
You may have had multiple teeth extracted due to injury or decay. You could choose to leave this open gap, but this would affect how well you could speak and eat. Additionally, you might feel self-conscious about having a gap in your teeth. Fortunately, ComfortCare Dental has various restoration procedures available. Multiple tooth implants are preferred in this case because they can preserve your other natural teeth, they look better, and they feel better.
Benefits of Multiple Tooth Implants
There are several types of restorations that can work for you: bridges, dentures, and dental implants. Multiple tooth implants are your best option. Despite being slightly more invasive, multiple tooth implants are a better option because they do not affect your remaining natural teeth. With bridges and dentures, we must shave off some of the enamel from your natural teeth in order to attach the dental restoration. Restorations must be cemented to natural teeth for support.
However, dental implants can also provide support for certain types of bridges and dentures. These have a more natural look and restore more function than traditional bridges and dentures. They are also easier to maintain since they are free-standing structures.
Procedure
Before placing dental implants, we must examine the oral cavity and underlying tissues to ensure that there is enough bone structure to support the implants. We will provide a basic visual examination prior to tooth extraction. We will also collect digital images of bone and soft tissue. We do this because there are two different types of dental implant. Endosteal implants are the best choice since they provide more support to the bridge or denture. However, they are placed into the jawbone which requires significant strength in your bone structure.
We can give you a subperiosteal implant, which only goes into the gum, but this does not provide as much support. On the other hand, we can perform procedures to prepare your jaw. These include ridge modification and sinus augmentation. Ridge modification allows us to expose the jawbone in order to fill in any defects with synthetic or donor bone tissue. Sinus augmentation raises the floor of the sinus in order to develop more bone tissue in your upper jaw.
Once we finish preparing the jaw and extracting the teeth, we will bring you in for your multiple tooth implant surgery. We first make a small cut in the gum and bone to insert the implants. Once they are in place, we suture the incision and allow time for healing. Complete healing may take six months. While healing, your bone will fuse with the implant so that it acts as an artificial tooth root. We will provide a temporary restoration while you wait for this process to complete. At this time, our lab will use a previously collected dental impression to craft a custom permanent bridge or denture.
After healing, we can take off the temporary restoration and place the permanent bridge or crown. We use dental cement to affix it to the implants. This cement hardens when we shine a specific type of light on it.
Contact ComfortCare Dental for more information on multiple tooth implants.
Sources
https://www.perio.org/consumer/multiple-tooth-implant
https://www.perio.org/consumer/sinus-augmentation
https://www.perio.org/consumer/ridge-modification