How Dental Implants Work

Dental implants are 'teeth roots' used in dentistry

, to support the 'artificial teeth' which are in turn used to fill in gaps, left after loss of natural teeth for one reason or another. Contrary to what most of us imagine, the difficult thing in this restorative procedure is not creating the 'artificial tooth.' Creating the artificial tooth is really an artistic venture, which almost anyone provided with the right tools can get done. Rather, the difficult part is getting the support for this artificial root on the jaws, seeing that the body tends to be very 'reluctant' in accepting foreign objects that interact with it on a fundamental level.

In order to understand how dental implants work, it is therefore worth mentioning that in restoring teeth after loss, we are usually not only looking for 'cosmetic restoration' but also for functional restoration. The person in whom the restorative teeth are fitted not only wants teeth that will be 'seen' on their mouth, but also teeth that they can actually chew stuff with.

As mentioned earlier, restoring the structural bit of the restorative tooth is not really challenging. The problem is in restoring the function of it, so that it can be part of the person's active dental formula. The aim to get a tooth that can respond to nervous stimulation, a tooth that blood flows into its root, really - a tooth that is thoroughly integrated with the rest.

For many years, getting such a thoroughly integrated artificial tooth was an insurmountable challenge. Structural integration could be quite easily achieved, even by having an artist study the shape of one's teeth, their arrangement, and then creating an artificial tooth that could seamlessly merge with the rest at a cosmetic level. But getting functional integration would have called for the development of a tooth (or at least a tooth whose root) the body would integrate with completely - and this was no mean task.

A breakthrough came in 1952, when a Swedish surgeon name P I Branemark, made the observation that given adequate time, titanium implants could eventually become so well integrated into the body that flood started flowing through them, and they started receiving nervous messages. It is from this that modern dental implants were born. Interestingly, Braneberk's work with titanium was not initially centered on the mouth, though this is where his invention has come to find the greatest application.

So the way the dental implants work is by being put into a part of the jaw where restorative teeth are to be later placed, and then given time to heal and integrate. The integration is supposed to be so thorough that they come to be served by the blood vessel passing thereat. Before their placement to the part of the jaw mouth that they are placed, it is ensured that they are made in such a way that the restorative teeth will fit into it perfectly. Once the implants are in place, completed healed and integrated, the tooth for which they are supposed to serve as a root is introduced: and the person in question ends up with not only a cosmetic restorative tooth, but actually a fully functional restorative tooth or teeth, as may be the case.

by: James Maloney

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