What are dental implants?

Dental implants are an artificial substitute for the replacement of missing teeth or a recent tooth extraction. If you are missing a few teeth, or all your teeth, you can get a brand new set of permanent teeth that feel and function just like your natural teeth. Dental implants in our Houston dental clinic is a popular and effective long-term solution for teeth replacement. Patients often choose this type of oral surgery at our houston dental implant center to treat missing or failing teeth, or chronic dental problems. Implants are surgically placed in the jawbone to function the same as natural teeth thereby preventing bone loss and reduction. The new implants are fitted with high-strength porcelain crowns, bridges and dentures to restore a beautiful smile. At NW Dental we use the latest in techniques and technology to perform dental implants that are pain free and stress free.

Why should I choose dental implants?

Dental implants can change your life. We give patients the confidence to smile, the ability to eat better, and the ability to say things they want to say. We strive to give them that experience so they can live normal, stress-free lives. We enjoy changing people's lives and making a permanent impact on their emotional health through the improvement in dental health. Often patients come to us and they are in pain and unhappy because they feel they did not get a job due to an ugly smile. After we treat that patient, and they return and say their new smile helped them get a new job or improve their career, that is a life changing experience as a professional and you can’t replace that with anything else. At NW we take this approach to dentistry to heart.

Our teeth play 3 major roles: aesthetic, phonetics, and function. Aesthetics is your smile, so you won’t like your smile without teeth, dental implants help you get that. Phonetics has to do with speech and teeth play a major role in talking. Without proper teeth speech problems like lisping, articulation disorders, cluttering, and apraxia may occur. The third role is function. Having missing or problematic teeth make doing normal things like eating corn on the cob, biting through an apple, or having a chicken wing difficult and sometimes painful. Dental implants take care of these three main functions for teeth.

Reasons for Dental Implants:

• Missing tooth or teeth.
• Dentures are ineffective or problematic.
• Support for other teeth.
• After a tooth extraction.

Dental Implant Benefits

• Dental implants have almost a 100% success rate.
• Dental implants are custom designed.
• Dental implants fit perfectly between existing teeth.
• Dental implants look and feel more natural compared to dentures or bridges.
• Dental implants last the lifetime of a patient offering great long term value.
• Dental implants prevent bone reduction or atrophy in the jawbone when a tooth is missing.
• Dental implants offer strong support for artificial dental crowns.

Are dental implants painful?

The process for dental implants can be painless with the right techniques and technology. At NW Dental we can use sedation to allow our patients to sleep through the entire dental implant procedure allowing them to not feel any pain or discomfort. The region where the implant is being placed is numbed so patients will not feel pain during the process. Sometimes patients may experience slight swelling or irritation for a couple days after surgery, however this usually goes away in 48 hours. Often patients will be prescribed pain medication in which they will only feel a little soreness post-surgery.

Will my body reject a dental implant?

The material we use in dental implants are medical-grade 4-5 titanium which is highly biocompatible, strong, and will fuse to living bones cells of the jaw to create a long-lasting bond that does not slip or move. Patients can use these implants for life and they can eat and chew pretty much everything that can be eaten and chewed with natural teeth.

How much do dental implants cost?

The costs for dental implants have come down significantly and at NW Dental we work to make sure you get financing options and get the implants at a very affordable price.

How long does dental implant surgery take?

With dental implants we can replace the patients single tooth that is missing or we can replace all the teeth that are missing. Normally when we are replacing a single tooth or a couple of teeth, the patient does not usually get the final crown on the same day, the body requres about 3-4 months to heal before the final tooth can be implanted. However, when we are doing multiple implants we can connect all of them together and we can give the patient a brand new smile on the same day we pull the teeth out.