Mini Dental Implants in Flower Mound
by Dental implants Flower Mound TX
Posted on 24-12-2022 01:58 am
Mini Dental Implants
Today we discuss why mini dental implants might be a great choice for you. They are affordability and can help stabilize loose dentures.
We've been doing implants for about 20 years and about 5 years of mini implants. I'm glad you brought up mini implants. I think for people who need them just the word mini, maybe even sounds a little less intimidating. Well, it is. It's a way of stabilizing somebody's denture that is less invasive, less painful, it heals faster, fewer visits something I'm excited about because people are going for it in a big way.
What are Mini Dental Implants?
It was discovered years ago if you put titanium screws in bone, the bone will grow into it. And, the original standard implants that have been used for 30 years are effective at stabilizing dentures.
People have had problems with cost. So, my patients would come to me and say gee I would love to have this, but it costs a lot of money. I found there were these mini implants that were almost half the cost. And they do as well of a job as the standard implants. How do you explain the difference between mini implants and the more traditional or normal implants that we're used to?
That's a good question. Their standard implants are large because they have to have a screw hole through the center of them. So we're looking at the difference in the size of the hole it seems to be. Right. It's more of a surgical procedure to place that kind of hole in somebody's jawbone.
The human jaw is only so wide. So if you put a smaller hole in, there is less trauma, there is less difficulty in healing, and there is less of everything. And the mini implant is maybe 2 or 3-millimeter at the most in diameter whereas the traditional one could be 6-millimeter. There is only so much jaw bone you have and you need to have something that fits inside the jaw. Don't all of us over time lose some of the bone sometimes people have diminished bone structure so there are fewer to work with.
Yes. What happens is if you don't brush and floss the bone starts to deteriorate it will disappear around your teeth and when you have a tooth extracted between 30 and 60% of the bone disappear when a tooth is extracted. When somebody has all of their teeth extracted the whole ridge goes down, down, down throughout their life, and for many individuals who when become higher in age, decades and decades of not having teeth the bone has gone down so far there is hardly anything for the denture to rest on.
The Benefits of Mini Dental Implants
They are saddled with pain, and ill-fitting. It's a constant lifestyle challenge for these people. Are mini dental implants for just one missing tooth so people who have lost one tooth are what they are used for or certain you use it for more than one tooth? That's another session. But, we do individual teeth, just, the other day, a fellow had a removable partial which he took in and out all the time. He had four teeth across the front they were uneven and didn't match the color. He came and we had individual implants put in.
We put crowns on it. When he walked out his wife cried she said he looks like the guy I married now can you do something about his hair? Hair is an art whole other story. Let's talk about dentures because you mentioned sometimes people have existing dentures, but still may need mini implants so can you attach someone's existing denture to a mini implant? Yes.
The statistics from the government say that there are over 40 million people in the united states who have no teeth at all. Wow. Okay. And by the way, we're looking at this example here. You can see from the graphics there that if we place those kinds of implants in there we can build either that kind of restoration or something that has flanges more like a denture.
We can do various things with an existing denture many times people come in and the denture is perfect, but the undersize of it moves around and pinches their gums and they are miserable. We even had a family where a lady came in and her brother paid to have mini implants for her because she's been complaining for so many decades. She was eating corn on the court cob the next day. We need to evaluate someone's history.
We have a three-dimensional x-ray machine where we can see things from all different angles and in three dimensions. We do an oral examination and we have an art thing going on right now where if someone would like to find out if they are candidates or not they may stop in and we'll do an examination and that radio graph graphs complimentary right now. That's wonderful.