After months of anxiety and frequent dental visits, you’ve got your dental implants in and they’ve finally healed. Your dentist tells you that they’re integrated into your bone, and soon enough you have your prosthetic teeth replacements in (this could be a crown/bridge/denture supported by the dental implant). Your dentist gives you a good half hour of advice on caring for your implant, but you were a little too focused on your new smile and didn’t pay much attention.
Have no fear! Here are 5 tips to let you know just what to do for those new dental implants so they can give you maximum benefits for the time and money you invested:
- Good Oral Hygiene Maintenance: We cannot stress the importance of home oral care enough. It is of prime importance because you will only visit your dentist once every couple of months, and within that short period any compromise on your oral care routine can cost you dearly.
You must preserve the integrity of your dental implants. Prevention in this context is always better than cure, because it can save you a lot of time and money.Regular brushing in the proper way, flossing, using your dental picks or interdental brushes are all crucial.
- Regular Dental Visits: Even with a great home oral care routine, it’s easy to miss out on some of the hidden areas around your new implant. They may only be accessible with ultrasonic cleaning, which you will not have access to at home. Your dentist will have customized scaling tips to best suit cleaning around implants.
- Early Detection of Implant Glitches: Watch for early signs of chips or cracks on your tooth replacements (crown/bridge/denture). Also check for ill-fitting regions that can be adjusted before they have detrimental damage to your tissues or to the prosthesis itself.
- Regular Health Checks: Recent studies have shown a correlation between certain systemic diseases such as Diabetes Mellitus and heart disease to your gum health. It’s been proven that worsening of these diseases to your health progressively worsens your gum health, and worsening gum health may in turn worsen your overall health.
To break this vicious cycle, it’s as important to maintain your overall health as it is your oral health for the integrity of your implants. Your implants either sit within your jaw bone, which is covered by your gums, or they are supported by adjacent teeth around your implant site.
It’s vital to maintain the health of your gums. All parameters that affect gum health can contribute to the well-being of your dental implants.