Description
Dr. Mark Link discusses how dental implants are the very best option for patients who are missing teeth. What makes them so special is that they replace the roots of natural teeth, which means better bone health, greater biting strength, and unmatched stability for restorations. We use surgical guides during implant placement for maximized precision and a smoother recovery.
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Dental implants is basically
a replacement for the root of teeth.
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If you could imagine your tooth
is made of two parts,
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the part that's sticking out of the gum
and the part that's below the gum.
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An implant replaces the part
that is below the gum.
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The advantage of that over say,
for instance, a denture is just
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it's almost I can't even imagine
having a denture if it were me,
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if it were my mouth,
knowing the difference between the two,
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because with implants,
we can actually give patients back
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all of their biting strength.
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We can give them back
the feel of their palate
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and their ability to taste.
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It's just a wonderful technology.
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We can now reverse engineer
our implant placements
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such that the implant
is always going to go
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exactly where it needs to go
relative to the tooth on top of it.
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We're going to avoid any nerves.
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We're going to avoid damaging
the adjacent teeth,
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and we're going to have
a really good long-term outcome.
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Essentially that, again,
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the goal is to have a tooth replacement
that no one knows is a tooth replacement.
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You hear a lot today about teeth in a day.
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While sometimes that is possible
and sometimes that's even the best way,
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it rarely is.
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What I would say is it'd be much better
to have teeth for a lifetime.
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If having teeth for a lifetime
means you have to take, say,
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3-6 months to get there,
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it's certainly worth
that investment of time.
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Anybody who's missing teeth
is a good candidate for dental implants.
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Unless there's not a sufficient volume
of bone to place an implant.
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Recovering from any surgery,
of course, you're going to have swelling,
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You're going to have pain.
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There are times when patients,
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they have almost no pain,
and they go back to work the same day.
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Sometimes when it's a more involved case,
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and we do have to reflect
soft tissues or site create,
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then it's a little more involved.
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But in terms of the post-operative course,
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it's usually quite short
and really not that uncomfortable.
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The benefits, I believe, for implants,
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say, versus the older technologies
that we had for replacing teeth
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is again, this idea that every tooth
has its own legs,
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and so that any future problem
is not a multi-tooth problem,
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it's a single tooth problem.
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That's number one.
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Number two,
because each of the teeth are separate,
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you can floss between them
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versus, say, a bridge
where you cannot floss between them.
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Keeping your teeth clean
and therefore keeping them healthy
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is a much easier task
when you have implants versus, say,
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some of the older technologies,
a bridge, or a partial denture, et cetera.