Implant Dentistry

Mohaad A. Faraj Dental implants are the gold standard for tooth replacement for many reasons. One, they are more conservative. Yes, we are drilling into the bone and placing a screw, but many times you have healthy adjacent teeth. If we're doing a bridge, we are shaving healthy enamel to be able to give that bridge. Typically, bridges last about 7-10 years. There's always going to be a recurrent decay issue. At that point, you're dealing with a three-tooth problem where you initially had a one-tooth problem. Implant can focus on one-tooth problem rather than bringing adjacent teeth into that situation. Typically, a bridge is a good option, but an implant is always going to be the first option. Another outcome of implant is it allows the bone resorption in that edentulous space to be halted. If you don't get an implant, that bone resorption is going to get more and more with time to the point where you're going to have food impaction issue, which also translates into more recurrent decay under a bridge. An implant is always going to be the best option. I cannot truly think of any contraindication for actual implant placement. There is some things that we have to work through. There are some patients that need more bone grafting. There are some patients that need to get their sugar under control, or they're on medication that they need to stop for a bit. Other than that, everyone is a candidate. We get this question a lot, I smoke, am I a candidate for implants? The short answer is yes. It does put you at a slightly increased risk for failure. We're talking instead of 97%, 98% success rate, maybe you're about 95, which is still really good. I do not discriminate. A lot of our patients are smokers. They understand the risk that comes with smoking, but they are definitely candidates, and we have great success rates with them as well.