Dental Implants

Dental implants are used to treat missing teeth, ensuring more strength and beauty in your tooth structure. Dental implants can also work in conjunction with dentures, to lessen the irritation in your gum tissue that could result from dentures.

Dental implants can also decelerate loss of your jaw bone.

As artificial tooth replacements, dental implants are usually made of titanium. If you experience tooth loss, you may feel self-conscious about your smile. Dental implants not only provide strength and functional wear of your teeth, but they also restore the beauty of your smile.

About the Procedure

Your cosmetic dentist will first prepare your jaw for implant post insertion by drilling a small hole at the jaw bone. This allows the titanium screw to go through the tooth structure and hold the dental implant post. Your dentist will then widen the hole and insert a protective screw so that the tooth structure can heal and get ready for the implant post. Your dentist will then insert the dental implant into your jaw bone.

Within your bone, there are mononucleate cells called osteoblasts. Osteoblasts have a crucial relationship with osseointegrated implants, and therefore play a significant role in the healing process. The healing process consists of the jaw bone and gums growing around the implant post. This healing period—osseointegration—takes about three to six months to complete.

As one of the most successful dental procedures, dental implants have a five-year success rate of 95 percent for implants in the lower jaw bone and 90 percent for implants in the upper jaw bone.

If osseointegration fails, then your implant post may break, loosen or even become infected. Smokers risk an increased chance of dental implant failure.

Cost of Dental Implants

The cost of dental implants depends on the severity of your case, the dentist and the actual location of the dentist. Typically, you can expect to spend about $3,500. A single implant can cost between $1,000 to $5,000 and a full-mouth reconstruction with dental implants can be about $24,000 to $100,000.