Dental Implant Procedure
Stuart, FL
 Getting your first dental implants should not be an uncomfortable experience, but many adults are afraid of the dentist. This is why at Colin M. McKinney, DMD, we believe that all patients should be educated about our procedures. Just saying that it will not hurt or that we are using anesthesia is not enough. We need to tell you why it will not hurt and what else we will do so you will be able to enjoy a brighter smile.
Starting Out
With all kinds of procedures that we do in your mouth, preparation is always important. For installing a dental implant, we will start with a good look at the structures of your mouth. This includes your teeth, gums, jaws, and tongue. However, simply looking at them with the naked eye is not good enough. We need specialized equipment like dental x-rays for a better view.
What we need is a precise, three-dimensional map of the area we are installing on and its immediate surroundings. For patients with large-scale tooth loss, we might even have to scan the whole mouth.
In some cases, we may even need to add bone grafts. This is when we find that the jawbones are too thin to handle an implant without cracking. The graft needs to harden and be ready before getting implants.
Installing The Implants
On the day when we install the implants, we will give you an anesthetic. After that, we can begin the operation. For some patients, we will need to extract a broken tooth before replacing it with an implant. That is actually the best case scenario. But if not, then we would be installing on a grafted bone.
Afterward, we would first install the dental implant post. Everything about the implant relies on this post.
Next comes the abutment. This is a small cap that keeps the gums from healing over the post. It is usually made from the same material, which is mostly titanium but sometimes cobalt. This is also where we place the next component on, which is the crown.
Lastly, we place the crown which serves as a replacement tooth. Depending on what material we made it from, it could be metallic with the same color as the titanium abutment, or made from porcelain or ceramic which are colored to look as natural as possible. Unlike the abutment, the crown is shaped to handle quite a lot of pressure, which you will need for chewing food.
Getting a new set of dental implants can be quite scary for the first time. Luckily, we at Colin M. McKinney, DMD will guide you and teach you how to take the best care of them. Just give us a call at (772) 266-2223 whenever you are ready to schedule an appointment.
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