If you have recently lost one of your teeth, you understand how disruptive it can become immediately. While the esthetic effect of tooth loss is apparent, the loss of function your bite experiences may be even worse. This is because your smile relies on every single tooth to operate fully. When a single tooth is missing, the neighboring teeth can begin to drift out of position and toward the open gap. This increases your level of bite misalignment, increasing the likelihood of tooth decay, gum disease, and other oral threats. When certain teeth take a disproportionate amount of force from your bite, they wear down the enamel, exposing sensitive inner material to bacteria that live in your mouth. By damaging other teeth, you become at risk of losing additional teeth. Fortunately, a dental implant could provide a permanent replacement tooth with the aid of a post inserted directly into your jawbone.
At Sunny Smiles Family Dentistry, we offer restorative treatments to combat dental loss with prosthodontics that return form and function. This means designing an implant that replicates your natural tooth’s appearance while restoring the strength of its bite. To determine if you are healthy enough for this procedure, we will take X-ray scans of the jawbone to evaluate its density. If you qualify, we can schedule an implant procedure shortly.