Don’t Let a Missing Tooth Make You Feel Ashamed
If you have even just one missing tooth, you may not be getting full enjoyment out of your favorite foods, conversing with friends, and other daily pleasures. Adding a healthy new tooth not only eliminates the gap, it allows your confidence and your enjoyment of life to return, and it prevents some future complications. Did you know the roots of your teeth help maintain your jawbone’s health through the stimulation of chewing and biting? With just a single missing tooth, the bone underneath can atrophy and begin to recede. Without treatment, this decay can trigger more tooth loss and make your face take on a sunken, unnaturally aged look. The ideal way to replace a missing tooth is by placing a dental implant in Lexington, South Carolina. Created to look and feel like a natural tooth, and built to last, dental implants take the place of the whole tooth from the roots to the crown. The team at Bela Family Dentistry of White Knoll has wide-ranging experience in renewing smiles and lives through dental implants. You’ll see the results on grateful faces throughout the Lexington, SC area!
Are Dental Implants for Everyone?
Since our jaws will typically grow through the late teens, most dental implant recipients are adults. The success of implant placement hinges on a stable jaw. Many dental implant seekers in the Lexington area have lost a tooth due to a dental health issue or through oral trauma. If you’ve had a similar experience, there’s a good possibility that you qualify for a dental implant. If your mouth is in otherwise healthy condition, we might be able to give you an implant without the need for any other dental treatments. In some cases, we may have to complete additional procedures to make your mouth ready for a dental implant. These include extraction if your problem tooth is still in place but unhealthy and unsalvageable and bone grafting to reestablish your jawbone if recession has weakened it to the point that it won’t hold an implant.
3 Steps to a Complete Smile
Step 1: Personalized Consultation
While many of our patients are already dental implant candidates with or without additional treatments, all implant cases are unique. Variables such as the condition of your dental health, your specific smile goals, and your apprehensions about undergoing treatment make your case unique. Our aim is to understand all of those and fully discuss each during a one-on-one consultation at our Lexington office. This is a key part of a guiding philosophy centered on building a close and lasting relationship with you and your family. We strive to make you fully satisfied with each visit so that you’ll return here for your dental care for many years to come. To have a successful dental implant placement, we make high-resolution 3D scans of your mouth with our low-radiation cone beam CT technology. With these images we can fully evaluate the treatment area and devise a customized treatment plan that reflects your smile goals and respects your budget.
Step 2: Dental Implant Placement
The first step we take during your dental implant placement visit is to make you relaxed with sedation. Our goal is for your procedure to be as pain-free as possible and we offer multiple sedation options to achieve it. Our Lexington treatment rooms are equipped with local anesthetic, oral sedation, nitrous oxide, and IV sedation and we use these in combination or individually for the most effective pain management. Since dental anxiety prevents many patients from seeking dental treatment, we offer IV sedation, which produces a sleeplike condition throughout a procedure and leaves you with no memory of having it. After sedating you, we surgically embed a sturdy, screwlike post in your jawbone to act as an artificial tooth root. We use implants from top U.S.-based manufacturers such as BioHorizons®, Nobel Biocare, and Straumann®. Our team may also be able to fit you with a temporary crown during the same visit, depending on your dental health, so you can leave our office without that unsightly gap in your smile!
Step 3: Recovery and Restoration
In the days following your implant placement, you should experience no more than minor discomfort. This can usually be managed with non-prescription medications but we can write you a prescription if you experience more pain. While you’re healing your implant post is fusing with the supporting jawbone, gradually becoming a permanent, comfortable part of your body. This process sometimes takes a few months, but it is critical to the stability of your bite and the overall success of your implant procedure. Once you’ve fully recovered you’ll visit our office again to have your customized final restoration placed. We pay extra attention to the way your new tooth looks and feels, verifying that the size, shape, and color of your permanent crown seamlessly blends with your other teeth—and is everything you wanted it to be.
A Cost-Effective Option
Because of all their exclusive advantages, dental implants are today’s most popular and only permanent tooth replacement method. They’re unrivaled in terms of appearance and performance. If you decide against them you may jeopardize your dental health, compromise your quality of life, and wind up paying more for restorative treatment in the future. An implant can help you avoid those extra treatments and their costs. At this point you’re probably wondering how much a dental implant costs. As we stated earlier, no two implant patients have the exact same needs. Also, though some patients may be prepared to pay for their new tooth outright, we understand that some may need to make other more flexible arrangements. To help make your mouth whole again, we can assist you in securing financing through a third-party financing company, which will allow you to divide your cost into more manageable monthly payments with reasonable interest rates. Request full details on how to finance your restored smile during a personalized consultation at our Lexington office!
Our Patients tell the story best
An unhealthy or missing tooth is no match for a dental implant.
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