Some Information You Should Know About Dental Implants

While most people know about the possibility of loosing one's teeth and having to wear dentures, few understand the likely side effects of these events on the jawbones. Once a tooth is lost, the bone in that part of the jaw begins to atrophy (grow smaller). The best way to prevent this from happening is through the use of dental implants, or tooth replacement therapy.

There are a few facts you should keep in mind when trying to decide what treatment works best for you.

The use of dentures only increases the rate of bone loss, hence dentures need to be replaced as the size of the jaw changes. The longer you use dentures, the more bone will disappear, possibly to the extent that any type of treatment will be unsuccessful.

One interesting statistic - after only five years, 60% of partial denture wearers will have had to replace their original dentures. Clearly dentures are not a good choice in terms of either value or usage. Even that 40% that can still wear the same partial denture 5 years later are losing the all-important underlying bone structure. Something else you may not have heard - 50% of partial denture wearers say they can chew better without having the partial in.

One recent survey found that in a mere eight years, tooth decay and fracturing destroyed 40% of the abutments, the teeth that the partial is hooked to for support. Someone with all their teeth can bite down with an average of 200 pounds of force. On the other hand, someone with dentures can only apply about 50 pounds of force. As time passes, that number drops dramatically, with 15-year denture wearers only able to generate 6 pounds of force, so no more hard or crunchy foods allowed.

A typical average lower full denture will move from side to side an average of one inch while chewing, a difficult issue that many new denture wearers must be able to adapt to. Dentures can have a dramatic impact on the lives of those who must rely on them - they generally have a much lower nutritional intake, a diet of soft foods, and even a ten year shorter life span. Many of these problems can be resolved with the single tooth implant, which has a 98% success rate, and does not pose any harm to the other teeth.

Over a ten year period, implanted bridges or dentures still have a 95% success rate with very little loss of supporting bone. There are many reasons that implants are the best choice for tooth replacement - a more natural and comfortable fit, a replacement tooth that will last for years, and a method that won't damage any surviving natural teeth.