Dental Implant Vocabulary

When Phoenix residents choose to get dental implants, they may not always know what their dentists are talking about when they throw out terms like “osseointegration” or “bone graft.” Here are some important definitions to help you better understand your dentist when discussing dental implants.

Bridge: A bridge is a group of several artificial teeth that are connected to one another. If a Phoenix patient wants to replace or restore a group of teeth, the use of a bridge is usually recommended. This way several teeth can be attached to a smaller number of implanted roots.

Bone Graft: Occasionally a patient will not have enough healthy bone in his or her jaw to support dental implants. When this happens, the patient will need to receive a bone graft. It is a type of transplant, where additional bone (synthetic or natural) is surgically connected to the existing bone to create a more stable foundation for the implant.

Osseointegration: The prefix “osseo” means “bone,” so when we talk about osseointegration, we are referring to something—in this case a titanium screw—being integrated or included into a bone. Bone can grow so closely around titanium that they actually merge together. This is what makes your dental implants permanent.

Restoration: Sometimes when we talk about artificial teeth, we call them restorations. And that is essentially what they are: something to restore your teeth to their most beautiful state.

Titanium: Most metals do not fuse well with living bone tissue. Titanium does. In fact, it fuses so well that it effectively becomes a part of the bone that would be extremely difficult to remove. Titanium is an excellent material to use to create strong roots for individual restorations and bridges.

Harris Dental is proud of the quality implant dentistry work we have done for our patients in the Phoenix area, but don’t take our word for it, read what our patients have to say by visiting our testimonials page. Find out more about dental implants by calling Harris Dental in Phoenix today!

This entry was posted on Monday, March 1st, 2010 at 8:00 am and is filed under dental implants, restorative dentistry. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.