Even a single missing tooth can impact your oral health and comfort beyond the gap itself. Your chewing ability, bite alignment, the health of your remaining teeth, and how you feel about your smile can all be influenced. At Prostho Endo Dental Group in North Bethesda, MD, we replace a missing tooth with dental implants that are meticulously planned, beautifully restored, and feel right at home in your smile. Combining specialty-level expertise in prosthodontics and endodontics with state-of-the-art technology and custom restorations made here in our office, our team helps patients replace a single tooth to promote better overall oral health.
Replace One Tooth Without Disturbing Others
One-tooth implants can be the best solution for some patients when you have a single missing tooth, and your adjacent teeth are healthy. A one-tooth implant will allow you to keep your remaining teeth healthy, unlike a traditional dental bridge, where the teeth on both sides must often be drilled to make room for the bridge.
The implant functions as an artificial root, and a restoration is placed on top to fill in the area with a single, natural-looking tooth. By placing an implant, you don’t have to remove any healthy tooth structure to replace your missing tooth, offering you another restoration option with fewer side effects for your mouth. Our office will help you determine if a one-tooth implant is right for you.
One Tooth Implants Support Oral Health
The jawbone needs to receive stimulation from your teeth to stay strong and dense. After a tooth has been extracted, the bone is no longer stimulated in this area and will begin to shrink. Bone loss can result in a variety of problems with the surrounding teeth and gums. One-tooth implants offer the benefit of bone preservation in a missing area because the implant mimics the tooth root and helps maintain healthy bone tissue.
Preserving bone is crucial for successful restorative treatments because the shape and density of your remaining bone will influence your dental implant’s stability and your final cosmetic outcome. If enough bone loss occurs or if the tooth has been missing for a while, additional treatments may be recommended to ensure the success of the replacement tooth. This helps to build the strongest possible support structure for the tooth restoration, creating a natural and effective outcome.
Planning Implant Placement With CBCT Imaging
It is not just the space of the missing tooth that our team considers when planning implant placement; our team looks at the mouth in its entirety. CBCT (cone beam computerized tomography) imaging can allow our team to view the bone in the jaw, the root of the neighboring teeth, the location of the sinus, the path of nerve branches, and the surrounding anatomical features in 3D. This type of 3D assessment is important for cases such as a single implant, where spacing, angulation, and bone volume are important considerations.
Our team can utilize digital imaging prior to treatment to determine the most advantageous position for an implant to be placed. The goal is not to place an implant simply into the space available, but to determine the position for the final crown and the relationship of the implant crown to the opposing teeth and other teeth in the arch. This restorative-driven position will allow the team to place the implant to be secured by bone and also provide the correct position to support an implant crown that is natural-looking and functional.
Custom Implant Crowns Crafted In-House
The implant crown that sits on the top of the implant restoration is what the patient will see and use, so careful planning and design of these features are important for implant success. Prostho Endo Dental Group can custom fabricate implant crowns to optimize the shape, shade, contour, and bite relationship for implant restorations. Having the capability to complete the restorative phase in-house allows for a more personalized approach to the fabrication of the final crown, especially for a single anterior implant crown.
For example, a single implant crown for a front tooth must replicate the unique features of the neighboring tooth so that the crown does not stand out from the rest of the smile. Features such as the level of the gumline, crown height, shape, width, translucency, and surface textures are important for a pleasing result. A single implant crown in the back of the mouth must provide enough material to support chewing forces without overhanging the adjacent tooth. The crown should not stick out, look large or flat, or be positioned incorrectly in the overall bite.
In the case of a single implant, the restorative phase will need attention and care to create the ideal restorative result. This phase may include small nuances to the final crown that will make a big difference. It should feel natural in the mouth and appear natural in the smile without calling attention to itself.
Restoring Natural Appearance & Function
Once your implant has been restored, you can feel as though you are back to eating your favorite foods, speaking normally, and laughing without hiding your smile. Your final crown is permanently attached to the implant and will not require you to take it in and out each night like a partial denture. Ideally, it will provide support for biting and chewing while maintaining a natural appearance to the overall smile.
The function of the restoration is just as important to ensure proper restoration of the individual tooth, and in consideration of the overall arch of teeth. A crown that is too tall, too short, too narrow, or too wide may lead to problems with how the teeth contact each other and may result in tooth or implant discomfort. For this reason, our team considers the individual restoration in the overall bite, not just the space of the missing tooth or teeth, to create the desired result for your comfort, longevity, and stability of the implant and natural teeth.
The Pros Of Dental Implants For One Missing Tooth
There are many advantages to receiving one dental implant to replace a single tooth and have a fixed and independent option for restoration. Although treatment is specific to each patient’s needs, dental implant therapy is commonly favored because the implant restores both the appearance of the smile and the underlying oral structures.
Some potential pros of one implant to replace a missing tooth include the fact that the patient:
- Will get one missing tooth replaced with the option of not having to grind down a healthy natural tooth.
- Is able to stimulate and preserve the bone structure in the area where the tooth is absent.
- Gets fixed support for proper biting and speaking.
- Gets a customized tooth that is designed to complement the look of adjacent teeth.
- Avoids the shift of neighboring teeth into the gap left by the missing tooth.
- Can maintain the stability of the bite in the long term, as treatment was planned and supported accordingly.
Single tooth implants can be an excellent treatment for a missing tooth for many patients located in North Bethesda, MD, who want a solution with good function, looks, and tissue preservation.
Healing & Bonding With The Dental Implant
After the dental implant has been placed, the bone around the implant will heal and bond (a process known as osseointegration) with the implant. This period of integration is necessary because it will create a strong and stable base for the permanent crown once it is in place. The amount of healing time that is necessary is based on several factors, including how healthy the bone around the implant is, the location of the implant, whether bone grafting was done, and the person’s health.
In the meantime, the patient will receive some special instructions on how to clean, eat, and care for the implant in its healing phase. Visits back to the office are scheduled so that the care team can evaluate the healing of the bone around the implant and make sure that the integration is going well prior to putting on the final restoration for this tooth. It is important not to hurry the process in order to avoid jeopardizing the long-term success of the implant. The tooth will be placed when the dental implant is ready and supported with good bone quality to take the forces that are part of normal eating.
Caring For The Dental Implant In The Long-Term
It is important to maintain and care for a single-tooth dental implant, even though it is intended to be a long-term and strong option. The dental implant crown cannot develop dental caries, but there are other issues that are possible, such as inflammation of the gum tissue, buildup of bacteria and plaque, as well as stresses to the bite. With periodic dental check-ups, the dental team can evaluate the dental implant and its support, clean and examine the implant crown, and check to make sure that the bite is still good.
At home, patients will want to brush and floss well around the dental implant tooth in the same fashion as with a natural tooth. It is likely that a special type of dental floss, interdental brushes, or a water flosser will be recommended, depending on the shape of the tooth crown and gum tissue around the dental implant.
Both good treatment design and consistent maintenance are necessary for success. At Prostho Endo Dental Group, our team will take the time needed to plan, place, and care for dental implants one tooth at a time in order to deliver the detail that is necessary for good long-term comfort, function, and looks.