Doctor Bill Ligon on dental implants
Dental implants are pretty much the only product that you can put in somebody, or prosthesis that you can put in somebody’s mouth, that actually mimics more of a natural tooth as opposed to a bridge. If you have one missing tooth, one option would be to do a fixed partial denture or a bridge, so to speak, but you’re bridging that to two other healthy teeth. So the success of replacing that tooth with a bridge is dependent on the other teeth on either side of that being healthy and staying healthy.
An implant is a stand-alone deal. It’s on its own, it’s basically, for lack of a better example, it’s a screw that’s threaded into your bone that integrates, “osseointegrates,” with your tissue there, and then you just have a crown that’s put on top of that. And it’s, as far as a missing tooth restoration, that’s the standard of care these days, I would say. For edentulous patients, like completely edentulous patients, we can put implants in, four or five implants in, and put in, like a snap-on denture in that keeps a denture from moving around, and it gives you a much better way to eat without dentures being loose. And that’s another great product for patients as well.