If you have suffered from tooth loss, and you plan on getting your smiled repaired, you may wonder if dental implants or dentures would be best for your situation. While both give you the cosmetic appearance of having all of your teeth, implants have several benefits over dentures. Here are some of these benefits and a quick summary on how implants are placed in the mouth, helping you decide if they could possibly be the answer for you.

Who Can Get Implants?

Implants are able to be placed into the gum area of patients that are able to withstand a surgical process. You also would need to have a sturdy bone structure for the implants to be able to be embedded into. If you have suffered from periodontal disease, there is a chance that you may need to get dentures instead of implants, if your bone loss is too great. 

How Are Implants Placed?

Getting implants is a surgical procedure. You would need to have anesthesia and you would be asleep during the procedure. Your surgeon would cut open your gum area and place metal rods into the bone underneath. One end of the rod goes into the bone and the other end protrudes from the gum into the area where your tooth was once located. You would have a rod placed in each spot where there is a missing tooth. You would be stitched back up and would need to heal before adding porcelain teeth to the parts sticking out.

What Are The Benefits Over Dentures?

Having implants placed has several benefits over denture use. You would not be restricted in any way on what types of foods you would be able to eat. Since implants are much like your real teeth, crunchy, hard or sticky foods will not be a problem. When you try to eat with dentures, you risk having them fall out if you bite into something that may jar them out of place. This can cause a lot of embarrassment.

You will not have any discomfort after the surgical procedure has healed. You may even forget that you even have implants placed. With dentures, you have a little pain after having them in your mouth all day. They start to irritate your gum area.

You will not need to remove your implants to clean them or to rest your mouth. You can take care of the them in the same manner as you would your real teeth. With dentures, you will need to remove them to give your gum area a break. You also need to clean them overnight in a denture cleaning solution.