Dental Implants – Altamonte Springs, FL
The Most Long-Lasting & Natural-Looking Tooth Replacement Solution
Dental implants are currently the premier tooth replacement solution available today. With this treatment, your missing teeth in Altamonte Springs will literally be restored from the root up, giving you the most natural-looking and longest-lasting results possible. Our team of dentists has teamed up with local oral surgeons to rebuild thousands of smiles using implants over the years, and whether a person is missing a single tooth or an entire mouthful, the end product is always a renewed and beautiful smile. Are you ready to say “goodbye!” to the gaps in your teeth? If so, contact us today to talk about options for dental implants in Altamonte Springs, FL.
Why Choose Distinctive Dentistry on Maitland For Dental Implants?
- Proud to Partner with Talented Local Oral Surgeons
- Reasonable and Fair Fees with No Surprises
- Can Replace Any Number of Missing Teeth
What Are Dental Implants?
Dental implants have three major parts: the dental implant post, the abutment, and the final restoration. The implant post is inserted into your jawbone to mimic the roots of your missing tooth, while the abutment connects the final crown, bridge, or denture on top. This unique placement offers a wide variety of advantages over traditional tooth replacement options, which is why dentists consider it the gold standard for rebuilding smiles. When you replace missing teeth both above and below the gumline, the result is a smile that looks, feels, and functions, just like natural!
The 4 Step Dental Implant Process
Replacing one or more missing teeth with dental implants is a more complex process than receiving a traditional bridge or denture. Before your journey begins, we’ll walk you through the entire treatment process step by step so that you’ll understand exactly how your new smile will work. While every patient’s plan differs, below you’ll find some of the basic steps of how dental implants work in Altamonte Springs.
Initial Dental Implant Consultation
The first step in your tooth replacement journey is a consultation with one of our dentists. During this appointment, we’ll thoroughly examine your smile, discuss your restoration options, and create a personalized plan to meet your unique needs. We may also recommend certain preparatory treatments, such as bone grafting or gum disease therapy, to increase your chances of implant success.
Dental Implant Surgery
Once your smile is ready, you can schedule your implant placement procedure. We partner with the best oral surgeons in the area to give you the best care possible.
During the surgery, your gums are opened up to access your jawbone, and the posts are placed inside the bone at strategic angles and locations. A protective cap is placed over the implant to protect it and maintain the shape of your gum tissue during the healing process.
Dental Implant Osseointegration/Abutment
Depending on how many implants you received and your body’s healing abilities, it can take three to six months for the implants to fuse to your jawbone. This process is called osseointegration. After this process is finished, you’ll undergo another minor surgery to receive your abutments, which are small metal attachments that connect your implants to your restoration. A few weeks later, you’ll return to our dental office, where your implant dentist in Altamonte Springs will take impressions of your mouth and send them off to a trusted dental lab. From there, a team of professional ceramists will begin crafting your replacement teeth to our exact specifications. We may place a temporary restoration in the meantime.
Delivery of Dental Implant Restorations
Once your personalized crown, bridge, or denture has arrived from the lab, our team can remove your temporaries and place your permanent restoration onto your implant posts. This lifelike solution should provide you with decades of full, beautiful smiles!
Benefits of Dental Implants
If you have not heard much about dental implants before, you might be wondering what makes them such a good option compared to other forms of tooth replacement. The answer is simple: there are just so many benefits that you can only enjoy with dental implants thanks to their unique properties. Below are some examples of the advantages of implants that you will experience on a daily basis as well as over the long term.
Day-to-Day Benefits
- Varied Diet: Traditional dentures let you eat a wide variety of foods again, but you may find that you have trouble chewing certain foods, such as steak and other tough meats. With dental implants, there are virtually no restrictions on what you can eat, as the implant posts give your new teeth strength and stability nearly on par with your natural teeth.
- Confidence: Dental implants are virtually indistinguishable from real teeth, as the titanium posts are hidden under the gumline, and the restorations are designed to look as lifelike as possible. When your smile looks great and feels natural, it’s easy to flash a confident smile during important events.
- Easy Maintenance: You won’t have to make any drastic changes to your oral hygiene routine after receiving implants. Unlike traditional dentures that require a specialized kind of cleaning solution, implant restorations can be brushed and flossed as if they were real teeth. Excellent hygiene at home combined with regular dental checkups make it easy to keep your new smile as healthy as possible.
- Stability: You don’t have to worry about implant restorations slipping at awkward moments; they’ll be permanently anchored in place thanks to the posts inserted into your jaw.
Health Benefits
- Healthy Jaw: Your natural teeth keep the jawbone stimulated, which is necessary for preventing bone loss. Since dental implants are the only form of tooth replacement that interfaces directly with the jawbone, they alone can provide the necessary stimulation to maintain a strong, healthy jaw after tooth loss.
- Better Nutrition: Since there is a limit on what you can successfully chew with missing teeth, it can sometimes be difficult to maintain proper nutrition after tooth loss. But with dental implants, you can eat virtually anything you want, and that means you’ll have no trouble getting the various nutrients you need to keep your body in excellent shape.
- Conservative Solution: A traditional dental bridge would require us to remove small amounts of enamel from your remaining teeth. With dental implants, this step is unnecessary, so your natural dental structure remains intact.
Long-Term Benefits
- Youthful Appearance: By maintaining your jaw, dental implants can prevent the deterioration that leads to the sunken, aged look that typically accompanies tooth loss.
- Durability: Dental implants can last for decades, meaning you don’t have to replace them nearly as often as dentures and bridges.
- High Success Rate: Even 20 years after their initial placement, dental implants still have a success rate as high as 95 percent.
Who Dental Implants Can Help
Dental implants can help address any number of missing teeth. During your consultation, we’ll carefully evaluate your jaws, gums, and any remaining teeth before fully explaining all your replacement options. Alongside all the different types of dental implants that you may benefit from, we may also work with you to solve additional oral health issues like gum disease and decayed teeth before your treatment begins to maximize the successfulness of your procedure.
Who Is a Good Candidate for Dental Implants?
Almost anyone can rebuild their smile with dental implants. Typically, you’ll need three things to be considered a good candidate:
- Great oral health
- Good overall health
- Adequate jawbone density
If you don’t meet these requirements, we’ll work with you to correct whatever issues are standing between you and your new smile. Then, we can move on to choosing the right kind of dental implant for you based on the extent of your tooth loss:
Missing 1 Tooth
If you are missing a single tooth, our team will use what is called an implant-retained crown to bring it back. It will consist of three main parts: an all-porcelain dental crown, an abutment, and the dental implant itself. The implant is actually a small titanium post that will be placed into your jaw to mimic the root structure of your lost tooth. The crown will be connected to it via the abutment, and the end result is a new tooth that is virtually indistinguishable from those around it in both look and function.
Missing Multiple Teeth
If you are missing a few teeth in a row, we can actually use these implant crowns to replace them without having to sacrifice neighboring healthy teeth (which is the case with a traditional bridge). One implant crown will be placed on either side of the gap in your smile, and these will be bonded to prosthetic teeth to close it. This will not only restore your smile’s appearance, but it will also prevent the surround teething from drifting into the space (which often happens).
Missing All Teeth
If you are missing an entire arch of teeth and want a strong, comfortable denture, you may be interested in implant dentures. For this method, we anchor an entire denture into place with four to six dental implants. This eliminates many of the issues that come with traditional dentures, such as slipping at embarrassing moments or irritating the gums.
In some cases, we may even be able to replace your missing teeth in a single day with All-On-4/Teeth-in-a-Day! This treatment is ideal for patients who are missing all their teeth on one or both arches and have a thin or brittle jawbone. Once your dental implants are placed by a local surgeon, a temporary denture is secured into place to give you a complete smile while your mouth heals over the next few months.
Understanding the Cost of Dental Implants
Are you hesitant to commit to dental implants because of their price tag? If so, our team at Distinctive Dentistry on Maitland invites you to thoroughly consider this treatment. While many people find the cost of dental implants in Altamonte Springs to be the only thing holding them back, we wouldn’t recommend them unless we believed that they’re worth every single penny. To learn more about the factors that influence dental implant cost, keep reading below, or give us a call!
Types of Dental Implants
The number of implants you need is the primary factor affecting the price of your treatment. For instance, replacing a single lost tooth with just one implant post and a dental crown will cost significantly less than receiving several implants with a complex restoration (such as a bridge or denture). Furthermore,dental implants can be made from a variety of different manufacturers and be placed in multiple ways. When you meet with your implant dentist in Altamonte Springs for your consultation, we can discuss each of these variables and how they will impact your overall cost.
The Stages of Dental Implant Treatment
Because the dental implant process occurs in several phases over the course of multiple months, you won’t have to pay for the entire treatment at once. You can break up your payment into more manageable chunks.
Some patients require preliminary treatment, such as gum disease therapy, tooth extractions, or bone grafting, to prepare them for implants. After that, you have the implant placement surgery, then the installation of your abutments, and finally, the design and placement of your permanent restoration.
Are Dental Implants Worth the Investment?
When it comes to replacing missing teeth, we believe that dental implants in Altamonte Springs are the best smile investment you can make. Not only will your new teeth look and feel amazing, but this treatment can actually save you money in the long run. Dental implants can potentially last 30 years or even longer, while traditional dentures and bridges only last 5 to 10 years on average. You’ll just pay a one-time fee when you first get implants instead of frequently paying to repair or replace other options. Eventually, these adjustments might end up costing more than the initial dental implant price!
Does My Dental Insurance Cover Dental Implants?
In most cases, your dental insurance provider won’t cover the cost of the implants themselves. However, they might partially cover other parts of the treatment, such as your restoration or preliminary work. Our team is happy to file claims and maximize benefits for all PPO dental insurance plans.
If you need a little extra help funding your new smile, we encourage you to ask us about applying for a low-to-no interest loan through CareCredit.
Advanced Dental Implant Procedures
Many patients are not quite ready to jump straight into the dental implant process right away. This is especially true if you have been missing teeth for some time, as your oral structures begin to change after tooth loss. Because these structures become the foundation for your new teeth, it’s essential that they are reliably sturdy before implants can be placed. In these cases, our team may refer you to one of our partnered specialists to perform an advanced dental implant procedure in Altamonte Springs to ensure successful results.
Bone Grafting
The reason why dental implants are able to last as long as they do is a process called osseointegration, during which the implant posts merge with your jawbone. Not only will these posts mimic the function of your natural tooth roots, but they also prevent the jawbone from deteriorating as it normally does after teeth have been lost.
However, if one or more of your teeth have been gone for a while, your jawbone may have shrunken slightly due to a lack of stimulation from tooth roots. If that’s the case, you might need to undergo bone grafting in Altamonte Springs. Bone material from another part of your body or a donor (or even synthetic bone material) can be grafted onto the thinner sections of your jawbone. After a few months, the bone should be strong enough to accommodate dental implants.
Sinus Lift
The back of the upper jaw often contains less bone mass than other areas. It’s also right next to your maxillary sinuses. If our team worries that placing dental implants will create problems with your sinuses, we will likely recommend a sinus lift in Altamonte Springs.
This procedure involves opening your gums and bone to access the sinus cavity. Then, the sinus membrane is gently lifted. Bone grafting material is placed in this area to improve the bone’s density. Usually, it takes between four and twelve months before the bone is fully ready for implant placement.
PRP/PRF Treatment
If we’re concerned about the risk of complications following dental implant surgery, the specialist could perform platelet-rich fibrin (PRF) and platelet-rich plasma (PRP) treatment. This increases the chances of osseointegration occurring without a hitch, leading to long-term dental implant success. Not only does applying these plasms to the treatment site reduce your need to pain medication and anti-inflammatories after the procedure, but it also lowers the risk of infection and speeds up the healing process.
Ridge Expansion
When enough time passes after tooth loss, the jawbone erodes to the point that it changes the shape of one or both arches in your mouth. As a result, the jaw may not be wide enough to support dental implants in Altamonte Springs. In this case, our specialist can perform a ridge expansion procedure. The ridge bone will be divided and wedged apart, creating a space into which bone grafting material can be inserted.
Dental Implant Frequently Asked Questions
Do you have questions about how life with dental implants will be different? Are you wondering what the process of replacing missing teeth with dental implants in Altamonte Springs will be like? Our team at Distinctive Dentistry on Maitland is happy to provide you with the answers you’re looking for. If you don’t see the information you need below, please don’t hesitate to call our dental office to ask one of our staff members directly!
Does dental implant surgery hurt?
Some of our patients who have never undergone oral surgery before feel nervous about their dental implant placement, and that’s completely understandable! Your implant dentist in Altamonte Springs partners with local expert oral surgeons to make this part of the treatment as precise and comfortable as possible. Depending on how many dental implants you’re having placed, they’ll either administer a local anesthetic to completely numb the area so you can’t feel a thing or use sedation to help you reach a calmed and relaxed state.
In less complicated cases, our patients usually feel back to their normal selves within a day or two after their surgery.
Do dental implants last longer than dentures?
Yes. On average, traditional restorations like dentures only last between five and seven years before they need to be repaired or replaced. Dental implants have been shown to last for 35 years or longer with the proper maintenance. Although they have a higher up-front price tag, their lifespan often makes them just as cost-effective as traditional dentures or bridges.
How can I avoid dental implant failure?
Dental implants boast an impressive 95 percent success rate, even for patients who have had them for 10 years! While the risk of implant failure is low, there are a few habits or conditions that could increase your risk of experiencing this problem.
Tobacco use and uncontrolled autoimmune diseases have been known to slow down the osseointegration and healing process after dental implant placement, ultimately leading to failed fusion with the jawbone or peri-implantitis, or an oral infection. If you either use tobacco products or have a medical condition that impacts your immune system, please let us know during your initial consultation so we can make plans to minimize any risk of complications throughout the process.
Do I need to be worried about cavities if I have dental implants?
Even though your prosthetics can’t get cavities, your dental implants can become infected if you’re not mindful of maintaining good oral health. It’s important to brush your teeth twice each day for at least two minutes, floss daily, and rinse with antibacterial mouthwash to keep your gums healthy and minimize your risk of implant failure.
Maintaining & Caring For Your Dental Implants
Dental implants can not only last for decades, but are capable of lasting for the rest of your life when you take the proper steps to keep them healthy. In fact, this is just another one of the ways in which they are like your natural teeth; take care of them and they’ll take care of you! Below, we’ve broken down the most important steps you’ll need to take to ensure your new smile stays healthy and your implants don’t experience any problems going forward.
Make Oral Hygiene a Priority
Brushing your teeth is by far the most important step you can take to keep your dental implants healthy as poor oral hygiene is the most common cause of implant failure. For example, you should brush your teeth twice a day with a fluoridated toothpaste and floss daily. While these steps are the bare minimum, there are ways to make your oral care even more comprehensive. Adding an oral rinse to your routine can keep the areas around the implant clean, including the gum tissue.
Eat a Healthy Diet
With dental implants, you can eat all the foods you enjoy and then some without any concern of them shifting out of place. But that doesn’t mean you can only eat unhealthy snacks like chips and candy all day. A balanced diet ensures both your mouth and body get the nutrients they need to stay healthy. For example, having a diet rich with vitamins and minerals like calcium, Vitamin A, Vitamin C, Vitamin D, and phosphorus all contribute to positive oral health. Keep starches and sugars to a minimum, whether you have dental implants or not.
Break Bad Habits
Dental implants, like natural teeth, are incredibly durable. Even though the implant is made from titanium and the crown is made from strong dental ceramic, they are not designed to handle anything but edible materials. That means you’ll need to break bad habits that can easily damage your teeth, such as biting your fingernails, using your teeth to open packages and bottles, and chewing on pens and pencils. Additionally, smoking or using tobacco of any kind is the worst thing you can do for your dental implants, particularly the prosthetic root integrated inside your jawbone.
Protect Your Dental Implants
Staying active is important, but in many cases you will need the right protection to keep your smile intact. For example, if you do enjoy sports that have a risk for impact, including basketball, boxing, football, baseball, or wrestling, a custom-made mouthguard is essential for reducing the chances of a dental emergency. The same applies if you have a teeth grinding habit, which can easily leave a restoration cracked or chipped when you least expect it. Wear a custom-made nightguard while you sleep to prevent this dental emergency from happening.
Schedule Regular Dental Checkups
The restorations attached to dental implants cannot decay, but our dental office will still want to see it (as well as the rest of your smile) every six months for an exam and cleaning. We’ll be able to review them and confirm no damage or other issues are present. In the event something is not quite right, we can address it early and reduce the chances of you needing to pay for expensive restorative treatments later.