Dental Implants and Numbness

What are the risks of temporary numbness afterwards?

Numbness happens when a nerve is not allowed to work, this can be permanent if the nerve is cut or temporary if there is swelling around the nerve. Once the swelling decreases the numbness decreases.

Chances of numbness depend on where the implant is placed. In the Upper jaw there is very little chance as there are no nerves in the "normal places" where we put the implants.

Higher risk is in the lower jaw so it's really important to take good quality digital x-rays to be able to measure accurately distances from the nerve.

Also to avoid damage to the nerve if there is not much room is to use a piezo surgery unit to do the drilling of the bone. A piezo unit does not cut nerves so with this machine it is relatively safe

Implants in a day – can this be possible?

Many practices advertise this as an eye catching advert. Is this possible with all the

advances in implants? It might be.

Dr Malo of Malo Clinic in Portugal is considered one of the several pioneers of

the “all on 4” technique.

In this way of working all teeth, if present, are removed and 4 implants are placed

and immediately teeth are placed on the four implants (sometimes 5 implants) and the

success rate is higher then expected.

So why don’t we all just rip our teeth out and have these highly successful implants?

No more pain, no more caries, no more periodontal disease! If only life was that

simple! (More of this on another Blog)

As with all implants the success rate of immediate implants is related to the quality

and quantity of bone.

At Smile Dental Implants the percentage of patients we see that could have immediate

implants is very small. All the research shows that failure of immediate implants

is greater than when a period of healing, 8- 12 weeks happens.

I am not if it was me that I would want to swap waiting for eight weeks with a lower success rate.

I can understand that many patients will be wanting to get rid of uncomfortable,

wobbly dentures ASAP but at the expense of something that’s going to take longer

to produce (only 8 Weeks) but will last generally for longer than any other form of

dental treatment? I don’t know!

Who decides? – It has to be the patient after informed

consent of course!

Glossary: - Immediate implants refer to implants placed and loaded for function straight away.

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Single Tooth Dental Implants

JE is a lovely 75 yr old lady! The dilema she faced was to have either:

1. A denture - removable and often uncomfortable for one tooth - she didn't like this option
2. A bridge - this means removing healthy tooth structure either side of the gap to support the false tooth in the middle. This doesn't come out like a denture but can affect the gum and surrounding teeth - she didn't like this option either.
3. An implant - this doesn't affect the teeth either side and will prevent further bone/gum loss in that area - she loved this option!

JE's own dentist wanted a specialist do treat his patient, so he referred her to us by to replace her missing lower tooth - she will then go back to her original dentist after this treatment.

We had a problem with lack of ridge width in this area and had to replace the missing bone with a simple bone graft - and here are the results.

You don't need to leave your existing dentist to have dental implants, you can simply have them with us then return to your regular dentist for all your other dental needs.