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3 Dental Replacement Options That Can Quickly Replace Extracted Teeth

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Loss of teeth due to a trauma- or decay-related extraction leaves open spaces in your mouth. These spaces might impair your self-confidence, particularly if the missing teeth are in the front of your mouth. A number of dental replacement options exist, but a few are faster than others at replacing your missing teeth. This means you have little to no time when you're walking around in public with missing teeth.

Here are a few of the fastest dental replacement options.

Immediate Dentures

Do you have an upcoming dentist appointment to have your few remaining teeth extracted? A full set of dentures is the best choice for a full mouth reconstruction. But traditional dentures require you to first completely heal from the extraction – a process that can take months.

Immediate dentures offer a faster alternative. During an office visit well before your extraction appointment, the dentist will take the measurements needed to create a set of dentures. The immediate dentures are put into place as soon as the extraction is completed so you won't even have to leave the office with missing teeth on extraction day.

The catch is that the immediate dentures will need a readjustment once your jaws have healed from the extraction. That's because a healing jaw is also a shifting jaw so the alignment and shape can change enough to make the dentures uncomfortable.

Immediate Dental Implant

A traditional dental implant involves a few steps spaced out with months of healing time.

First, the dentist drills into the jawbone and places a metal root in the hole. The area is allowed to heal until the bone and tissue have grown around the root and fused it into place, which offers the stability for the implant. Next, a post has to be affixed on top of the root and the gums are allowed to heal. Then the artificial tooth can finally be snapped onto the post.

But if you don't want to have an empty space in your mouth for months at a time, ask your dentist about immediate loading dental implants. In an immediate loading dental implant, the dentist implants the entire structure from root to tooth in the same day.

An immediate implant can't be used to replace a tooth that suffers a lot of biting force such as a molar. There's also a slight risk that the implant will fail to osseointegrate – or fuse with the bone – because even light frequent pressure keeps wiggling the root around in the bone.

Dental Bridge

If you only need to replace one tooth and it isn't a tooth that takes a lot of force, a dental bridge might be a quick replacement option for you. A dental bridge involves the dentist making artificial caps called crowns for the neighboring healthy teeth. The artificial tooth hangs from those crowns, which serve as support structures.

Your dentist should be able to make a dental bridge ahead of time if you have an extraction scheduled. Dental bridges can also serve as great temporary replacements if you plan to save up for the more expensive but also more stable dental implants. To find out more, speak with a business like Wigwam Dental Care.


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