Dental Implant Healing Process & Osseointegration
Houston, TX
Houston, TX
Bone Loss From Tooth Loss
When you lose a tooth and don’t replace it, there is often a cascade of negative effects. Neighboring teeth start to move around; your bite can change, more teeth are at risk of being lost. One of the biggest reasons that people who have lost teeth will continue to lose teeth is a bone loss in the jaw. Like any part of your body, your jaw requires constant feedback to stay happy and healthy. Your jawbone receives feedback from the roots of your teeth as they touch each other and help you to chew food. When a tooth is lost, the jawbone is at risk of atrophy, and when things in your body atrophy they start to wither away. This is where dental implants and osseointegration come in.
Preventing Bone Loss With Osseointegration
Osseointegration describes the body accepting and growing around an artificial implant. In this case, we use titanium dental implants that we surgically place into the bone of your jaw. Titanium is a well-known biocompatible material that is readily accepted by the human body. After we place a dental implant into your jaw, we will leave it to heal for some time. During this healing period, the bone in your jaw will grow around the titanium dental implant, forming a strong structural and functional bond with it. By forming this bond with the dental implant, the bone in your jaw receives the benefit of the constant feedback that it needs to stay healthy, and you receive the benefit of functional and permanent prosthetic teeth that can last you a lifetime!
The Osseointegration Healing Process
The healing process for dental implants varies from person to person and is heavily reliant on the health of the patient’s mouth. For someone who has only lost a single tooth and is looking to replace it right away with a dental implant, the osseointegration process can take only a month or so. Conversely, if you have experienced significant tooth loss and have some limiting oral health conditions, the healing process can take several months. We will be able to give you an idea of how long we expect your healing process to take once we do a consultation with you and take some scans of your mouth.