Most people in the world grow a full set of teeth. In fact, most people in the world today grow more teeth than they need. Back in the day, what we now call wisdom teeth enabled earlier humans to crunch and eat plant foods, but as we have evolved, we no longer need wisdom teeth. In some cases – very few to be sure – wisdom teeth grow through perfectly straight and with no problem at all, but in the case of most people our jaws have become smaller and the wisdom teeth try to force their way through at an angle, push other teeth out of alignment, and generally cause havoc within the mouth. This is why most of us need our wisdom teeth removed.

However, lots of people lose other teeth as a result of a combination of factors such as gum disease, resulting in tooth decay, and in some cases as the result of an accident. This can cause problems with eating certain foods and can also cause extreme embarrassment for many people who have gaps in their teeth which show up when they smile or laugh. Indeed, many people with missing teeth put their hand over their mouth to cover up the unsightly gaps when they smile or laugh.

Of course, dental practitioners over the years have found ways to replace these missing teeth with artificial teeth in order to overcome the various problems caused. These include crowns, bridges, and dentures, all of which have their limitations. Dentures, in particular, can cause a lot of problems because they can slip and slide about when eating or talking, and have even been known to fall out of the mouth when someone wearing them laughs out loud at a joke. Bridges require two perfectly good teeth each side of the missing one to be cut down in order to support the bridge. Crowns are only as good as the root which supports them.

However, in the last fifty years there has been the development of dental implants, the first of which was installed in a volunteer in 1965 by a surgeon named Branemark. This quickly led to further developments and today dental implants in Bristol are the best way forward for most people with missing teeth. They look and perform exactly like the original tooth.

A dental implant is a small screw made of titanium which is inserted into a hole drilled into the jawbone by the surgeon. It has a very slightly roughened surface to which the jawbone attaches itself over a period of anything from one to nine months during a process known as osteo ossification. This means that the titanium implant becomes firmly attached to the jawbone, after which a crown matching the surrounding teeth can be attached using one of a couple of different methods.

If you have any missing teeth and are considering dental implants in Bristol it is probably the best way forward. Dental implants can often last for the rest of a lifetime, and you can eat anything you wish, such as foods that you may not have been able to eat for very many years, like nuts, and barbecued beef. They can't possibly slip about like dentures, and today's crowns on dental implants are so good that nobody will ever know that you have dental implants unless you tell them.

Now, we also have advances in dental implant design such as mini and midi implants that can be inserted and crowned on the same day, so that you can be eating and laughing within hours. These require no drilling of the bone, no gum surgery, no stitches, no waiting, and fewer visits to the dentist. They use minimally invasive techniques and are immediately stable. If you have three or more missing teeth next to each other, you could opt for a bridge or partial denture which is supported by just two implants.

There are also other procedures such as one that is known as "teeth in a day" where all of the teeth can be removed and replaced with teeth supported on dental implants. This means that you go to the dentist in the morning and come home at night with a full set of gleaming white teeth.