Does It Hurt to Have Dental Implants Placed?

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Anesthesia is a key ingredient in the dental implant placement process. With it, you might not remember much from your procedure. Without it, you’d probably want to forget all of the discomfort you’d encounter. Thankfully, local anesthesia is requisite for dental implant placement because it virtually numbs any discomfort you’d otherwise suffer through. Take a look at why dental implant placement is relatively painless and how it can make your dental implant journey memorable for all the right reasons.

Local Anesthesia

Besides a small amount of pressure, you won’t feel much during your dental implant placement procedure. That’s because at the start of your procedure, you’ll be given a dose of a local anesthetic that’ll numb just about all of the sensation at the implant site or sites. Even as your dentist carefully bores holes into your jawbone to make way for your dental implants, you won’t feel any pain.

Aftercare and Minimizing the Pain

Inevitably, there’s will be a bit of pain and swelling at the implant site in the days following your procedure. Here’s how you can minimize the discomfort and swelling:

Bite down on the gauze your dentist will give you. When the gauze becomes too bloody, replace it with more.

Apply a bag of ice to the implant areas, holding it there for about 15 minutes every 15 minutes or so.

Stick to the schedule. Take your pain medicine as directed by your dentist. Not only will the pain medicine mute any discomfort you may feel, it’ll also help bring down the inflammation at the implant sites and help speed up the healing process.

Keep your head elevated, especially during the first few hours after surgery, to minimize the pressure you put on the implant site as the area begins forming clots needed for healing.

Don’t spit or drink through a straw until the bleeding at the implant site has stopped, indicating that clots have formed.

Dental Implants in Lake Balboa, CA

Schedule an appointment with a local dentist to learn more about your options for getting dental implants in Lake Balboa, CA and Van Nuys. 

What’s a Deep Cleaning?

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A teeth cleaning procedure is one of the simplest, most affordable and most effective services you’ll find at a dentist’s office. As great as this procedure is at removing tartar buildup from teeth and preserving the gums, sometimes it’s necessary to go deeper. If you haven’t been to the dentist’s office in a while and have been neglecting your oral health at home, your dentist may recommend you undergo a deep cleaning. Take a look at what a deep cleaning is and find out how it can stabilize the health of your mouth.

Scaling and Root Planing

Used similarly in a standard teeth cleaning procedure, a dental scaler is used to carefully scrape away tartar that has hardened onto the surfaces of the teeth. With a deep cleaning, your dentist or hygienist will remove tartar that has accumulated above and below the gum line.

With the tartar removed from each tooth, including each tooth’s roots, the next phase in the process is smoothing over the tooth roots so that the gums adhere to them uniformly. As gum disease advances, it begins to create bacterial pockets between the teeth and teeth roots. With the tarter removed and the teeth roots smoothed over, the gums typically tightened up around the teeth to provide maximum support.

Taking it Further

A scaling and root planing procedure is often highly effective at stopping gum disease in its tracks and saving mouths from the devastating, irreversible damage caused by advanced gum disease.

If scaling and root planing aren’t enough to stop the steady, destructive march of gum disease, an experienced periodontist may offer the following procedures:

Periodontal maintenance – when a one-off deep cleaning isn’t enough, your periodontist may recommend that you have the procedure done again every three to four months.

Osseous surgery – taking the deep cleaning process a step further, osseous surgery also entails removed bits of diseased gum tissues and decayed bone to stop the spread of the infection and to preserve the healthy area.

Your periodontist will reshape the damaged area of the bone and then attach the gums back to the jawbone and teeth.

Dentist in Van Nuys, CA

Schedule a consultation with a local dentist in Van Nuys, CA to learn more about just how affordable it is to keep your teeth and gums in good health. 

Do Dental Implants Look and Feel Like Natural Teeth?

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While effective, conventional dentures just don’t feel like natural teeth in the mouth. It’s a shortcoming based inherently on the design of conventional, adhesive-based dentures. Dental implants are a different story. Take a look at how dental implants work and find out just how close they can get to looking and feeling like your natural teeth looked and felt.

Why They Feel So Real

When natural teeth grow in, they take root in the jawbone to gain the reliability and stability needed to bite, chew and grind – day after day, year after year.

Dental implants feel like natural teeth because they’re designed to be implanted like natural teeth.

Take a look at the parts that compose a typical dental implant:

Implant post – typically made of titanium, the implant post is inserted into a tiny borehole carefully drilled into the jawbone.

Abutment – the abutment attaches to the top of the implant post and serves as a connector, linking the implant post with the dental restoration.

Dental restoration – this part is designed to look just like the natural tooth or teeth it’ll replace. Dental restorations include crowns, bridges and dentures.

Why They Look So Real

Beautiful, tooth-colored porcelain is commonly used in dental restorations to serve as replacement teeth. But it’s not just the shape and color of your replacement teeth that’ll make them look so convincing. It’s about what goes unseen.

Dentures affixed to dental implants won’t show any of the “tells” that clue people in that a person is wearing dentures. Here’s a look at some of the top reasons dental restorations attached to dental implants look so convincingly real:

·         They won’t limit what you can eat. The support from your jawbone will enable you to chew through chewy and fibrous foods like meat, sandwiches and fresh veggies.

·         They won’t slip out of place and distort your words or smile.

·         Depending on the style you choose, you may never have to take out your replacement teeth

Dental Implants North Hills CA

Take a moment to schedule a consultation with a local dentist to learn more about what you can expect from getting dental implants in North Hills, CA and Van Nuys.

How to Get the Most out of Your Full Arch Dental Implants

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When you treat them right, your full arch dental implants will reciprocate and treat you to many years of reliability. With regular dental care at home and check-ins with your dental staff, your full arch dental implants can last you the rest of your life.

Take a closer look at what you can do in the days immediately following your implant placement procedure, and in the long run, to keep your dental implants around for the rest of your life.

Aftercare Tips for Your Dental Implants

In the days following your procedure, you’ll have to manage mild to moderate bleeding and swelling at the implant sites. To do this, your doctor will likely prescribe a painkiller and a mouth rinse that’ll help prevent an infection from taking root.

Here are some basic guidelines you’ll be given for your first few days with dental implants in:

·         Use a sulcus brush to gently clean the implant sites

·         Take your pain medicine on schedule, even if you aren’t bothered by the mild discomfort. The painkiller your dentist prescribes will also reduce inflammation.

·         Apply ice to the implant site to bring down swelling and speed up healing

Routine Care Tips

In just a few days after your procedure, the swelling and tenderness at and around the implant site will subside. With the discomfort gone, or down to a minimum at least, you’ll be able to more thoroughly clean your mouth.

Here are some of the routine care tips your dentist will recommend:

·         Brush and floss daily, using a sulcus brush to clean tender and hard to reach areas of your mouth

·         Blast away leftover food particles in your mouth using a Waterpik

·         Rinse your mouth with an antibacterial mouth wash to get rid of any bacteria that survived your brushing, flossing and Waterpik

Full Arch Dental Implants San Fernando CA Take a moment to schedule an appointment with a local dentist to learn more about what you can expect from getting full arch dental implants in San Fernando, CA and Van Nuys, CA.

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Van Nuys, CA 91405

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