Don’t let an accident ruin your smile

If you have lost one or more teeth in an accident or playing sports, you could be as young as in your 20s and looking at decades of wearing removable false teeth.

Four or five decades of false teeth that have to be taken out and cleaned and that might start moving around in your mouth just when you least need it, is a grim prospect for anyone. However, with dental implants in Kent, at Centre for Aesthetic Periodontics and Implantology, it doesn’t have to be that way. You can, in fact, more or less pretend that the accident or sporting injury never happened, and carry on living just as you were before.

In Kent, dental implants have the edge on removable false teeth in terms of stability and freedom. This is because they are anchored firmly into the jawbone instead of resting on the gums, or attached to neighbouring teeth (which have to be ground down in order to receive a bridge).

Dental implants replace the root of the tooth as well as the crown. The implant itself is a tiny screw made from titanium, which our dentist will insert into a specially drilled channel in the jawbone. Once in place, it is left to heal for several weeks, during which time the special properties of titanium catalyse the bone tissue into growing and fusing with the metal, in a process called osseointegration.

Once the screws have fused with the bone, and are being held as securely as natural teeth, you are ready to have your artificial teeth fitted. These days, artificial teeth are made from incredibly hard-wearing porcelain. This is colour-matched to your remaining teeth, and our technicians use their artistry to match the shape of the tooth to those surrounding it, so that in both colour and shape it will be very difficult to tell what is natural and what is dental implant.

Not only that, but in Kent, dental implants can last for decades. They have a very low failure rate, less than 5%. You will be able to carry on with life, as any normal young person does, without worrying that your artificial teeth will let you down.