Best Dental Implants in Lindale and the greater East Texas area

A dental implant is a titanium post surgically placed into the jawbone to support a replacement tooth or permanent bridge. The implant acts as an anchor and helps hold the tooth in place.

The placement of the dental implants requires surgery, so you will need to be careful when selecting a dentist for this procedure. You will want someone who has extensive experience and a high success rate.

Our team at The Center for Implant and General Dentistry can significantly improve your teeth's health, function, and appearance with the help of single, multiple, or even full mouth dental implants. The design is based on you, your needs, and the size and shape of your natural tooth. Through a consultation, Dr. Clay Keith and Dr. Paul Denson can show you the difference in your function and comfort; we can design a customized treatment option that will consider your overall look, medical health, dental health, and function.

After your dentist determines that you're a good candidate for dental implants, they will schedule an appointment with oral surgery at our offices in Lindale, Texas. The procedure may take between one and two hours depending upon how complicated it turns out to be, in addition to any other oral injuries patients might have at their disposal as well.

The following is the step-by-step procedure for placing a dental implant:

Step 1: Placing the Implant

The first step is to place the implant in your jawbone surgically. One of our highly-trained oral surgeons performs this procedure, experts in placing implants. The process usually takes one to two hours, depending on the severity of your bone loss.

During this time, you will be given either general or local anesthesia to keep you comfortable while the implant is being placed. However, we have other levels of sedation at The Center for Implant and General Dentistry. We want you to feel no pain.

Once the implant has been inserted into your jawbone, a healing abutment will be attached to the end of it. The dentist will give you a temporary replacement tooth made from either a bridge or a dental crown that is colored and designed to match your natural teeth.

This crown functions as your new tooth while the implant heals, but ultimately the bridge will need to be replaced with another one when the implant is fully healed.

Step 2: Attaching the Post

After your implant has been given time to heal, attaching a post and a crown is the second step. The dentist uses x-rays or scans to show precisely where the jawbone is and how much bone needs to be added to hold the crown in place properly.

While you are under anesthesia, titanium posts are bonded with your jawbone using the same titanium type used to place the implant. The post is cemented onto your jawbone, and once it has been properly fitted, you will be sent home with a temporary bridge or top on top of this post.

Step 3: Crown Attachment

Once the jawbone has healed, your dentist will attach a temporary crown. Crowns are made in a dental lab and then directly placed over the posts that have been securely bonded into your jaw.

Your dentist will place temporary crowns on top of each post implanted until they can be appropriately shaped and colored to match the rest of your teeth. You will wear these temporary crowns for several weeks while the tooth is hardening in place.

In you are missing a tooth or teeth, or even parts of your jaw, these could be replaced with dental implants. First, there are a few very important factors that must be considered.

Experiments and practical experience have shown that implants work best when there is enough dense, healthy jawbone in a mouth that will support an implant.

Healthy, disease-free gum tissues are also necessary. The long-term success of a dental implant depends upon keeping the gums and bone around the implant healthy. People who have implants must keep them clean and should return regularly to their dentist for checkups, because any problems that might threaten the health of the implant must be corrected.

If you have any of the following conditions, dental implant therapy may not be for you:

• Crippling or uncontrolled disease.
• Conditions that affect the body's ability to heal and repair itself may have a negative effect on the placement and health of an implant.
• Persons with diseases (such as diabetes) that are not under control are not good candidates for dental implants because the uncontrolled disease keeps the body from healing itself normally. However, a diabetic person under proper control by a doctor could be treated successfully with implants.
• Other diseases such as leukemia or hyperparathyroidism (abnormal activity of the parathyroid glands) also may affect the outcome of implant treatment. Persons who are undergoing chemotherapy or radiation therapy for cancer should not have treatment procedures that are advantageous but not urgent (such as dental implants) until cancer treatment is completed and the doctor says it is safe to proceed.

If you have any questions about how your general health might affect dental implants in your mouth, you and your dentist should discuss this with your doctor.