Friday, November 20, 2009

Why Your Houston Cosmetic Dentist May Recommend a Perio-Ridge Augmentation

Sometimes you may lose one or more teeth. This can be because the tooth is too far gone to be repaired, and a Houston cosmetic dentist recommends extraction and replacement. It can also be because the tooth is knocked out by some unfortunate accident.

Regardless, a lost tooth is the beginning of complications, not the end. The gap that it creates will then create an indention in your gums and jawbone where the tooth once was.

A Houston cosmetic dentist can correct in this defect with a procedure called ridge augmentation. This will recapture the natural contour of your gums and jaw. A new tooth can then be created that is natural looking, easy-to-clean, and beautiful.

What would cause bone recession in the first place?
It is the nature of the body to reabsorb bone in this fashion. Bone requires vibrational stimulus to signal that brain to send it blood and nutrients for the maintaining and replication of bone cells.

When there is no vibration in a bone, the brain interprets this as a loss of need for the bone, so it reabsorbs the calcium and other minerals that constitute the bone’s makeup and uses these substances for other purposes.

How does this happen in the mouth?
Teeth and bones are intertwined. The roots penetrate into the bone, and the bone grows around the root. When teeth chew food, the vibrations they resonate stimulate the bone and keep it dynamically vibrant. When a tooth is extracted or lost, the bone is reabsorbed into itself.

Without the roots of the tooth to grow around, the jawbone feels it has nothing better to do than to simply withdraw and retreat from the gum line. Over time this indention can actually cause you to lose bone mass. This is not something you want to happen because it can become permanent.

So you see, this is what causes the indentation of the gum. It is both unnatural looking and will often cause a replacement tooth to look too long compared to the adjacent teeth.

What material is used to make this ridge augmentation?
The Houston cosmetic dentist has different options for performing a ridge augmentation. He or she can do use autogenously extracted bone (which means taken from the patient), donor bone, or artificial bone. All of these bone graft materials work, but the autogenously and donor bone works the best.

How do you attach it to the tooth?
Many times when implants are not placed in the extracted site, fixed porcelain bridges will be used to replace the missing teeth. Adjoining teeth are used as abutments to support the new bridge.

Do you have to do anything to the gum tissue?
When a Houston cosmetic dentist does a ridge augmentation, he or she will pump the tissue up to help fill the void. In most instances the tissue is very thin and it covers the bone. Once we increase the bone volume in the edentulous site, it will look like the tissue has filled in.

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Tuesday, October 27, 2009

Dental Implant Components

People have every right to ask their dentist what materials are being used to make the components of tooth repair and replacements that ultimately end up in their mouths. At the Cosmetic Dentistry Center of Houston, we not only encourage these questions, we answer them.

There are two basic dental implant materials used to create the tooth replacements that have earned the Houston Medical Center Dental Group an outstanding reputation among cosmetic dentists of Houston, Texas. These two materials are bio-friendly, meaning they are completely non-toxic and amenable to the tissues and bones of the mouth. They are also materials whose artificial nature is easy to obscure, making them ideal substances to use in the manufacture of all three major dental components.

The Base That Affixes to the Jaw is the Primary Dental Implant Component
Technically, the actual dental implant is the piece that the dentist affixes to the jawbone itself. This component is made from a material called Tivolloy. Tivolloy is a special titanium alloy developed in the late 1970s.

It was specifically developed for oral surgery, having been approved by the FDA as being completely bio-friendly to the tissues and bones of the human mouth. Tivolloy has little chance of being rejected by either gum tissue or bone, making it the best dental implant material available to cosmetic dentists.

The Abutment is the Secondary Dental Implant Component
The abutment is a piece that fits on top of the Tivolloy piece that goes into the bone. The purpose of the abutment is to create an optimal platform on which to place a tooth replacement crown.

Ideally, the base implant should be placed at the correct angle in the jaw bone so a prefabricated abutment can be used. Otherwise, the dentist will have to create a custom abutment to correct the impending alignment problem that will result if not corrected.

A pre-fabricated dental implant abutment offers a better fit than a custom abutment because the titanium used in both components makes them naturally fit together very tightly. This, in turn, contributes to long-term ossification process of the bone around the implant.

The Porcelain Crown is the Third and Most Visible Dental Implant Component
The porcelain crown that goes on top of the abutment is the dental implant component that most people visualize when they hear another person talk about dental implantation or permanent tooth replacement. This association is understandable when we consider how remarkable porcelain truly is.

Visually, it imitates the translucence of tooth enamel and therefore catches the attention of the eye. Someone who sees such a crown thinks, “My---what a beautiful, white, clean tooth” rather than, “Oh my…an implant.”

People never say such nonsense because when you smile at them they do not KNOW you have dental implants.

Porcelain is also one of the hardest materials used in cosmetic dentistry. Unlike the porcelain used to create decorative ornaments, this porcelain is specially heated and prepared to be super tough and able to bite through any normal foods people typically eat on a regular diet.

This allows you to get rid of dentures once and for all, get on with eating a normal diet, and start living a full and robust life once more.

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