Am I a Candidate for Dental Implants?
Syracuse, NY
Most people that have overall good oral health and general health are candidates for dental implants. There are a few factors that play into the success of your dental implant placement.
Healing
One of the most important factors to the success of the implant surgery is your ability to heal. There can be some reasons that a person can have a decreased ability to heal.
A person may heal slower due to:
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A variety of medications that you are taking, even if that medication is completely unrelated to your mouth, including various steroids and anti-inflammatories. |
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Uncontrolled diabetes. Along with diabetes comes a decrease in circulation. With circulation slowing, the body is not able to get the oxygenated blood flow it needs. In some situations we may discover that a patient has diabetes and is unaware. |
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Smoking or chewing of tobacco or cigarettes. Healing at the cellular level is done through the exposure to oxygen. When a person smokes cigarettes, it deprives the body of this much needed oxygen, and the body decreases its ability to repair and then rebuild cells. |
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Cancer treatment. Chemotherapy treatment and radiation use known chemicals that decrease a patient's ability to heal. |
None of these factors eliminate a patient from getting surgery, it just may delay it.
Janice K. Pliszczak, DDS is happy to work with your personal physician to get you in a healthier place before scheduling your implant procedure.
Bone Availability
Before placement, we will need to determine if the patient has sufficient bone to receive the dental implant. When a natural tooth is lost, the bone reacts with shrinkage. This is due to a process known as sorption.
Your bone is a living tissue. It is composed of billions of cells that are continuously going through a life cycle of birth and death. As we use our bone, it sends new, fresh cells to rebuild and restore each spot. When we don’t use an area of bone, it responds by pulling in its resources and no longer replenishes that area. This pulling in of resources is known as sorption. You may have seen bone sorption following the removal of a cast on an arm, or a leg. The area beneath the cast is visibly smaller. Alternatively, you may have noted that a person who uses a wheelchair has visibly smaller legs. In both situations, because the bone is not being used, or having pressure and motion applied, the bone decreases in size. This is the same for your jawbone.
Our teeth are connected to our jaw with a bone that we call a root. As we chew and speak, we are applying pressure to our teeth which transfer through our root and then applies pressure on our jaw bone. This motion stimulates the bone to say that resources are needed, and to keep this bone healthy. Once a tooth has been lost, this connection is also lost, and the bone decreases in size. This needed stimulation is not passed using a bridge or denture because there is no root to pass it on.
Because tooth loss is most common in older individuals, people have come to associate decreased facial structures as being an older face. Patients with missing teeth are assumed to be older. Using dental implants, we can rebuild this bone and provide your face the facial structure it needs to give you a more youthful appearance.
Before surgery, we may need to bulk up your bone with a bone graft procedure. A bone graft is a simple procedure done in the office.
Janice K. Pliszczak, DDS will first make sure that you are comfortable with a local anesthetic. Once ready, the tissue is opened up, and a few bone particles are placed inside to stimulate bone growth. These bone particles can come from a variety of sources including the patient, or from a donated source, using processed bone; or we can use synthetic bone. Once placed, the area is closed up, and the patient takes about three months for the new bone to grow and bulk up the area.
Contact Janice K. Pliszczak, DDS today at (315) 800-5020 to see if you are a candidate for dental implants and talk about if dental implants are affordable.
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