Treating Tooth Loss With Prosthetic Dentistry

Tooth loss can impact teens and adults due to injury or factors like periodontal disease, and lack of treatment can lead to issues for your ability to eat and speak. These changes can lead to serious issues with your overall quality of life, impacting how you interact with others and even your ability to enjoy a favorite dish. To preserve your smile and improve overall quality of life, your Grand Prairie, TX, dentist can offer lifelike dental prosthetics to restore smiles to optimal health, function, and beauty once again. From dental bridges to lifelike and long-lasting dental implants, we have options to help you smile without hesitation, and to safeguard your overall oral health and bite function in the process. We take time to ensure you can smile, laugh, and eat your favorite meals again with our custom and lifelike dental prosthetics.

The Causes of Missing Teeth

What causes a tooth to become missing? We could lose teeth due to an injury or accident, or as a result of an untreated cavity or infection. The most common factor behind adult tooth loss is the presence of periodontal disease. When the disease isn’t managed properly and reaches a more advanced stage known as periodontitis, this can cause adult tooth loss. As part of your treatment process, we want to examine your smile and assess the cause of your tooth loss. We may need to manage underlying issues like gum disease to ensure the success of your replacement teeth, particularly if we are placing dental implants.

The Impacts on Your Smile

What happens to our smiles when we lose natural teeth? The gaps could limit our meal options and deprives us of essential nutrients too. There could be issues speaking clearly, and the gaps could cause nearby teeth to shift from position and cause misalignment, itself a factor in the onset of tooth decay and gum disease. Missing teeth could alter your bite balance and place pressure on your jaw joints, increasing the risk of complications like TMJ disorder and bruxism (teeth grinding). The body will also respond to the loss of your natural teeth by suspending the flow of calcium and phosphorus to the areas around the missing roots. This causes the jawbone to break down and lose mass and density, causing further tooth loss and even an older appearance! By addressing your tooth loss with a custom prosthetic, we can prevent these complications from occurring.

Planning Treatment

To begin, we will examine your smile and talk to you about your oral health to assess the cause and severity of your tooth loss. We will take detailed digital x-rays of your smile too, which aid in planning the replacement of your missing teeth. When the time comes to prepare your smile and secure your new teeth, we can use anesthesia and sedation to ensure you enter a deep state of calm and relaxation, with little to no memory of the procedure at all afterward.

Dental Bridges

To address minor tooth loss, our team could create and place a dental bridge. The prosthetic can replace between one to four missing teeth in a row. We begin by numbing the teeth on each side of the gap, known as abutment teeth, and then remove structure from these teeth. Once we do, we will take detailed digital images and measurements of the teeth from multiple angles, and use these in a lab setting to design and craft your new prosthetic. The ceramic prosthetic will contain new teeth with crowns on one or both ends. The material we use ensures a durable chewing surface, and this material can also be shaded to blend with your smile too. When the bridge is ready, we will attach the crowns to the abutment teeth to secure your new ones in place for 10 to 15 years at a time!

Dentures

What if you have more advanced cases of tooth loss? You may need a set of dentures. If you have multiple gaps across the arch of your smile, but enough natural teeth in place that a full isn’t necessary, we could create a partial, which has teeth set in an acrylic base that looks like gum tissues. These teeth fit in between the gaps and metal clasps will connect to natural teeth to secure your new one in place. Fulls replace every tooth on one or both arches. A full row of new teeth is set in an acrylic base and suction or adhesives will keep the denture in place. These stay in place for about 5 to 10 years on average, and need to be soaked and cleaned regularly.

Dental Implants

The most lifelike and durable option is a dental implant, which is inserted into the jawbone and acts as a new root, stimulating the growth of jawbone tissues to prevent a break down. This enables your new tooth to stay in place much longer, often decades or even a lifetime. We can use one to replace a single missing tooth, completing your new tooth with a custom crown. We could also use several to support a bridge or even a complete set of dentures, which will never slip or require removal for cleaning or soaking.

If you have any questions about how we will treat lost teeth with our custom dental prosthetic, or if you would like to start the process with an initial exam and consultation, then contact our team today to learn more. We want to help you smile with confidence again, and that starts with a visit to our office!

Schedule Your Prosthetic Appointment Today

We want to help you find the right solution for your missing teeth, so you can smile with confidence and enjoy results that look natural and blend with your smile or offer a whole new one. For more information on our approach to prosthetic dentistry, schedule an appointment with Dr. Smith and our team by calling Pecan Tree Dental in Grand Prairie, TX, today at (972) 262-5111.