Dental Implants for Marrero: Get Your Complete Smile Back
Do you have missing teeth or teeth that need to be extracted? Perhaps you are wearing old dentures that cause pain, discomfort, or chewing difficulties. In Marrero, Dr. C.J. Landry offers advanced tooth replacement solutions that are permanent, stable, and incredibly lifelike. At Lapalco Family Dental, he can use dental implants to support dentures or replace individual missing teeth.
What are Dental Implants?
Dental implants are the greatest new technology we have in dentistry so far. It used to be if somebody was traumatically injured and lost a front tooth, it was a tragedy. You had to take two teeth on either side and make a bridge, but you had to sacrifice perfectly healthy teeth. Nowadays it’s more of a financial concern. We can place an implant, put a tooth on it, and people can’t tell the difference between that and natural teeth.
If you’ve lost teeth over the years and you have a denture, we can go back and retrofit it with implants so that when you’re wearing it, it’s rock solid, it doesn’t pop out, and it doesn’t move around. And, when we place implants, they also help prevent bone loss. As we age, if you wear dentures and have no teeth, the bone starts to naturally shrink. What happens when we place an implant is the jawbone looks at it as a natural tooth, and this helps keep the bone nice and strong. Marvelous. Every patient we’ve done it on has been absolutely thrilled.
Dental implants are synthetic tooth roots. They are tiny screws made of titanium, ceramic, or another biocompatible material. Traditional implant placement is a multi-step process. First, the dental surgeon makes a hole in the gums, embeds the implant, closes the gums, and waits for the screw to fuse or become one with surrounding bone. When this process (called osseointegration) is complete, the Dr. Landry will uncover the implant and attach the replacement tooth or denture on top.
There are many types of dental implants; some are designed to be placed in the dense bone, while others can be placed in the thinner bone. Whatever the type, dental implants are superior to other teeth replacement methods because implants restore a missing tooth from the root to the crown. No restoration is as stable or lifelike. It’s like “growing” new teeth!
Advantages of dental implants:
- No denture adhesive required
- Prevent jawbone deterioration at the implant site
- Restore almost 100% of your chewing ability
- Eat whatever you want
- Support the facial structure and improve your profile
- Stable, secure and can last for decades
Are Dental Implants Right for You?
When you have a regular denture, a removable denture, over time, the jawbone continues to resorb, or shrink. So even though it fits now, five years from now, the bone is going to be smaller. The denture doesn’t change in size, so you have to either get a new denture or have it relined. After several cycles, now you don’t have any bone left.
What happens when we place implants is the body looks at that implant just like it would a natural tooth. The bone maintains, it doesn’t resorb, so that denture is going to fit the same way it does now five years from now, ten years from now. You may need some maintenance, changing some of the retainers that hold it in, but you’re going to have a strong jawbone as you get older. It’s not going to be a situation where we have to look at you and say, “I’m sorry Mr. Smith or Miss Jones, you don’t enough bone to hold the denture in anymore.”
Ideal candidates for implant placement are those in good health and with good jawbone quality, although certain types of implants can be used if you have poor jawbone density. Only an implant specialist can determine if dental implants are right for you.
Implant Placement
The first step to getting implants is to actually have them placed within your jawbone, and this is accomplished with a minor oral surgery. Unlike other dental practices in the area, our team is able to handle this portion of the implant process so you can rebuild your smile while working with the same doctor and team you trust the entire time.
After thoroughly numbing your mouth, a small incision will be made in your gums, and then the implant post will be positioned within the jawbone where your natural tooth used to be. Once the gums have been closed, you’re done. Most patients report feeling very little discomfort during or after this procedure, and any swelling you might experience can be easily managed with over-the-counter medication.
At this point, you’ll be given 3-6 months to heal, during which the implant post will actually bond directly to the surrounding bone, creating an even stronger foundation. Once this is complete, you’ll return to our office to receive your new teeth.
Implant-Retained Crowns & Bridges
If you are replacing a single tooth with a dental implant, Dr. Landry will use what is called an implant-retained crown. This will consist of a custom-made all-porcelain crown that will replace your tooth above the gum line, and it will be attached directly to the post using a small connector called an abutment. This crown will be color-matched to your smile and should be virtually indistinguishable from your other teeth in both look and function.
For those missing a few teeth in a row, two implant crowns can also be used to form a bridge that doesn’t require any healthy teeth to be filed down. The crowns will be placed on either side of the gap in the smile, and these will be bonded to prosthetic teeth to close it. Compared to a traditional bridge, implant-retained bridges tend to look more natural and can be expected to last much longer as well.
Implant-Retained Dentures
Are you tired of dealing with uncomfortable dentures that never seem to stay in place? With dental implants, we can give you a set of teeth that you’ll always be able to rely on that also looks fantastic. Using multiple implants, we can place a fixed denture that has a much better and more consistent hold than a traditional removable prosthetic. Implant-retained dentures also enable a patient to have a stronger bite force compared to regular ones, allowing them to enjoy a more varied and healthy diet.