As a facial surgeon in Lee's Summit, Missouri, we specialize in surgically correcting a wide variety of dental problems and jaw abnormalities that cannot be helped by orthodontics.
If you are one of many adults who have lost even one front tooth, you are very likely to be very conscious that your smile isn't as attractive as it once was, but now shows an unsightly gap. This can be embarrassing in social situations and play havoc with your self-confidence especially when you wish to look your best. A facial surgeon in Lee's Summit will be able to help you recover that once appealing smile.
It is entirely common for people to lose one or more of their adult teeth, whether they have been extracted because of dental issues or lost through some traumatic injury. As disconcerting as the esthetics might be, they are not, from a medical standpoint, the most significant of the problems caused by missing teeth. Other issues, which are of much greater concern is the fact that:
a) Tooth loss is almost always followed by bone loss. All bone needs stimulation so as to maintain density that, in the case of the jaw, is provided by the action of the teeth. When teeth are missing, and the jaw bone gets no stimulation, it tends to deteriorate and shrink which, in turn leads to changes in the structure of the face. This process is called resorption, and the shrinkage can make you appear to be older than you are.
b) Our teeth partially rely on the support of the surrounding teeth to stay in place, which is why when some teeth are missing, the ones on either side tend to lean towards the gap. Not only can this cause excessive and uneven wear, but crooked teeth are hard to clean and stand a greater chance of decaying.
c) Missing molars often restrict what foods a person can and cannot eat. The problem arises with the fact that softer foods tend to be the most processed and offer the least nutrition. On the other hand harder to chew foods like nuts and apples offer greater nutritional value.
While these problems can easily be corrected with a removable partial or even a full denture, both have problems of their own, not the least of which is that the adjacent teeth have to be modified to support the denture. Full dentures often require dental adhesives that are messy and odd tasting.
The Benefits of Implants.
Replacing lost teeth with dental implants is the wisest course of action for several reasons. Although it is true that the procedure is more complicated, and can take three to six months to complete, the benefits are correspondingly high. Implants which literally replace the roots of your teeth, look and feel like your natural teeth and rarely have the problems that can accompany conventional dentures. After the healing period, they provide a strong foundation for replacement teeth that enable you to eat almost anything that you would like to. As a facial surgeon in Lee's Summit, we also like implants because they can stop resorption and help your jaw to remain strong for years to come. That and their natural appearance are two reasons that dental implants are our preferred tooth replacement solution.
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