Hi, guys. How you doing?
Today
let's go completely back to basics
and let's talk
about what
dental implant treatment is
and to keep it simple,
we're going to talk about
just replacing a single tooth
with dental implants.
Now, I know
some of the subscribers on
this channel are pretty
well-educated on
dental implant treatments,
but we're getting
2 to 3000 new subscribers
every month.
And there are
a whole bunch of people
for whom
dental implant
treatment is a completely new thing.
So maybe you've been told
by your dentist
that you've got this bad tooth
and maybe considered
dental implants,
and this is the first time
you're hearing about this
and you wanted to do
a bit of research.
This video is really to help you
at the earliest stages
of understanding
what dental implant treatment is.
Now, in a nutshell, dental
implant treatment is just one way
to replace a missing tooth.
The other ways are
a removable denture
or maybe a bridge.
Now your dentist will talk to you
about the advantages
and disadvantages
of each of these three treatments,
taking into account
your individual circumstances.
Because dental implants
are not the best treatment
for every single person
who has a missing tooth.
Now, it is thought
that replacing a tooth
with a dental implant is the closest
we can get
to replacing a natural tooth.
There are a bunch
of different differences.
I've made videos in the past
about this
and dental implant
treatment is by no means
a perfect solution.
Now let's talk about the advantages
quickly. Right.
Dental implants are strong once
the implant is in, is integrated,
it is probably stronger
than a natural tooth.
It will not move at all.
They look pretty realistic.
And if you're having
a tooth at the back,
it will look pretty much
just like dental implants at
the front is a little bit
more complex.
I'll come to that later.
There are pretty long
lasting treatment.
We expect dental implants
to last a long time now.
We're very vague
about how long they're going to last
because it's different
in every situation.
A lot
depends on your medical condition,
your medical history,
a lot depends on how
well you're
keeping the health of your guns
and your genetics.
Are you predisposed to gum disease?
All of these things will influence
how long these treatments
are going to last.
Now let's break
a dental implants up
into its three kind of components,
and I'll walk you
through the different processes
that we have to place
dental implants.
So when a dentist is talking
about dental implants,
the actual bit
that they're specifically
talking about
is the bit that goes into the bone.
Yes, it looks a bit like a screw.
And yes,
they're typically
screwed into the bone,
but we don't like
to call them screws.
So the dental implant itself,
as a patient,
you would never really see this.
So the hole is made in the bone
where the implant is going to go,
and then the implant is placed
or screwed into the bone.
And then we need to let
healing happen.
So healing of bone
typically takes 3 to 4 months.
In the lower jaw,
the bone is more dense.
It's a little bit quicker
to get an implant
fully integrated in the lower
jaw, in the top
jaw, especially towards the back.
We typically
leave it a little bit longer
because the bone isn't
quite as dense
and it's just better to leave it
a little bit longer.
Make sure you've got
a good integration
between bone and dental implants.
Now, traditionally,
what would go on top of an implant
is something called an abutment,
and this is essentially
a little connection
which connects the tooth part,
which we call the crown
to the implant part,
which we've just placed in the bone.
And what used to be the case
in the vast
majority of implants is
you have this abutment
which is screwed into position
and then
the visible part of the tooth is
then glued onto the abutment
in the same way
that a crown
is placed on a natural tooth.
Now these days
we try and do things a little bit
more different to this.
We will usually combine the abutment
and the crown into one unit
and the whole thing is then
screwed into the implants.
This has a major advantage
in that in the future,
if there's ever an issue,
if there's ever
gum irritation
or a problem
with the crown
or the implant just
doesn't feel right,
it's really easy to just unscrew
this whole crown and abutment,
this whole unit.
It comes out and we can investigate
the implants at a much deeper level.
Now, having a system like this
also has slight disadvantages,
but I think they are a bit
more advanced, a bit
out of the scope of this video.
But in general,
I would say in my clinic
about 99% of implants
are screw retained
because the advantages
outweigh the disadvantages
of this kind of system.
Now there's a number
of different ways
that you can have
dental implant treatment,
and it depends
on your individual situation.
Let's say
you've got a missing tooth there
already, then it's quite simple.
We'll take a CT
scan, we'll
look at the thickness of the bone,
the height of the available bone,
how far, nerves and sinuses,
all this kind of stuff is,
and choose the appropriate
sized implant.
Then you can have a treatment
to basically put the implants in it.
We normally book about 2 hours,
of which about half an
hour is actual surgical time
and the whole area is numbed.
A little cut is made
whole is made for the implant,
implant goes in
and a few stitches to close up.
Then after a few months,
once we know
the implant is integrated,
we can then take an impression
kind of similar to
if you've had an impression
for a crown or veneer over the top
and we can have the tooth part made
and then screwed in.
Now sometimes people
are in a situation
where you have a tooth
which is in a really bad condition.
Maybe there's an infection
underneath it,
maybe it's broken in a certain way
and there's no way
that we can save this tooth
and it might be right
to the front of the mouth.
So there are techniques available
where you can have
the tooth removed.
You can have an implant
placed on the same day.
Sometimes we do bone
grafting, tissue
grafting at the same visit as well.
And then the you would leave
this practice
with a temporary tooth in position.
This is really neat
because from an esthetic
point of view at the front,
not many people
are willing to walk around
without a front teeth.
Then after the same healing
time of 3 to 4 months,
you can
then have the final tooth made
and that can match the color
within natural teeth
really, really well.
Now implants
at the front of the mouth
are typically difficult,
not in terms
of getting the esthetics right,
not because the tooth,
the tooth
is actually really easy to match
in terms of color shade,
but it's the gum esthetics.
Okay.
Getting the gum lines
symmetrical on implants
at the front of the mouth
is really, really tricky.
And this is where it pays
to see
somebody who's more experienced
in dental implant treatment
at the front of the mouth.
Because it's not just a case
of having a dental implants.
When you have a tooth removed,
the bone changes shape.
You need to compensate
for this change in shape.
It may mean that
you need some kind of bone
grafting or connective tissue
grafting in order
to get the right aesthetics
at the front of the mouth.
Now, for some people
this is important.
For some people it's not important.
So again, it
depends on your individual situation
as to what the best way forward is.
Now, at the beginning of this video
gave you a whole bunch of advantages
of dental implant treatment,
but there are some disadvantages
that we need to be aware of.
And I've kind of alluded
to one already,
and that is the treatment time.
It takes a long time
to do all of this properly.
Yes, you can Google search.
You'll find teeth in the day.
Immediate dental implants,
but you almost never get
the finished results on that.
You'll get temporary teeth
on the initial date.
And again, it's situation dependent.
So it may be
that that treatment
is a possibility
for 80% of people,
but you could be unlucky
and that might not be an option
in your case
or it might just be safer to do it
in the more traditional way,
which is take the tooth out,
let it heal.
Implant goes in after three months,
then the tooth goes on top
after 3 to 4 months.
Okay, So just be aware.
And again,
if you go to some more experienced
implant surgeon,
they will give you more options,
the what
we call the immediate implants,
which is when you have a tooth
taken out and implant place
straight away,
is a much more
technically advanced treatment
than having an implant placed in a
in a site
where the tooth has been missing
for 3 to 4 months already.
So if you go to a beginner, I'm
sure you'll get a decent result.
But if you go to
someone much more experienced
in this kind of stuff,
typically you might have
a couple of different options
in terms of the way
that the treatment is carried out.
Now there's different terminologies
which dentists use.
And to be honest,
before I got into implants,
even as a dentist,
I found this stuff confusing.
So I'm going to try and break it
down.
We've got immediate placement
and we've got immediate
loading of the implant.
These are two different things
and immediate placement
is what I've just described,
where you have a bad tooth removed.
You then have the implant placed
on the same day,
immediate loading depends on
whether you get the tooth
on the implant on the same day,
a temporary teeth
or you wait a period of time
and then have the
the tooth placed
after 3 to 4 months.
If we're doing
an immediate placement
and immediate loading,
you're almost never going
to get that
final tooth placed in that that
that visit.
You would have
a temporary tooth placed
that would shape the gums.
That would also give you something
there for aesthetic reasons.
But it's decoration only can't you?
And if you do two units,
you will typically
break the temporary
or lose the implant
and we're back to square one.
And this has happened to me
a few times.
It's incredibly
frustrating for me and my patients.
I mean,
we don't charge anything
if it happens to our patients, but
I think we should.
So typically there's less risk
if you have
the tooth placed on at a later date.
Again, it's very situation
dependent and a lot
depends on your individual
bone pattern
and your individual situation.
Now I spoke about aesthetics of
front tooth implants
and this is really important.
This is probably the hardest thing
in implant dentistry.
Placing
the implant is relatively easy
compared to getting
that ideal end aesthetics,
because when we have a tooth out,
the bone shrinks. This is normal.
Everybody knows that
this is going to happen
to some degree or another
and we need to compensate for this.
So if you have a tooth
which is going
at the front of your mouth
and you want to get
the ideal esthetic outcome
at the end of treatment,
then it's worth doing your research
and finding a clinician
who can do that for you
because any old dentist
can put an implant in. That's easy.
But we need to either do a bone
graft procedure or a connective
tissue graft procedure,
and these are additional procedures.
They're going to have additional
time, additional cost to compensate
for the loss of bone
that you're going to get
when the tooth is removed.
Then it's usually a case of
you need to have
your temporary shaped
and reshaped a few times
to mold the gum
into getting that esthetic result.
And then
you have the final tooth made.
And again, this is the easy part.
Okay?
You slap it in the middle
about getting the gum to look right.
That's hard and takes experience
and time.
Whereas the actual
putting the implants in
and having the tooth done on top
are typically easier.
And I say that putting
the implants in is easy,
but there's a number of people
who have contacted us saying,
Hey, look,
I've had my implant placed abroad,
can you put the tooth on top?
And when we look at it,
the implant placement
is totally wrong
and you just
cannot get a good result
on that implant.
So putting
the implants in is important.
There's a bit of flexibility,
but if it's totally
in the wrong position,
then there's no way,
even with connective tissue
grafts, bone
grafts, that you're going to get
that ideal aesthetic result again.
Now let's talk about the pain.
Okay?
Typically
with dental implant treatment,
there shouldn't
be a lot of pain afterwards.
There should definitely
not be any pain
during the procedure
if your dentist knows how to numb up
properly.
I mean,
we once
we give our injections to numb up,
we wait
10 minutes because that's
how long it takes
for the anesthetic
to go deep into the bones.
Then the afterwards,
depending on the procedure
you had,
will dictate
how uncomfortable that is.
If you had a simple
implant placement,
which is literally little cut
hole implants in and close up,
you're hardly going to feel it
the next day.
Whereas if you had bone
grafting, tissue grafting,
that kind of stuff
as well as the implants,
then you're going to swell up.
You're definitely going
to swell up for a week
or so afterwards.
But the pain is usually less
than what your you're thinking
or what it looks like in the mirror.
It looks worse than
it actually feels.
But seeing this,
some people do experience
a lot of pain afterwards as well.
I'd say the vast majority,
it's less than what they expected,
but some people
will will find it uncomfortable
and you'll have to manage it
just with usually
over-the-counter painkiller.
You don't need anything stronger
for this kind of treatment.
So, I hope you
find this video useful.
I hope it gives you a little bit
more insight
into dental implant treatment.
If you are just exploring this
as a treatment option
for the vast majority of people,
this is a fantastic treatment
and nobody regrets having it done.
It is expensive.
It will take time.
There are complications
and risks
that you need to know about.
But this is true
with pretty much any dental work.
So until next time guys,
if you find it useful,
give it a thumbs up.
Consider subscribing
and I will see you soon. Take care.