Caring For Your Dental Implants

Caring for your new teeth that have been reestablished with full mouth dental implants is like looking after your natural teeth: that includes brushing and flossing, and standard dentist cleanings and checkups.

With a blend of appropriate oral care at home and at the dental office, your full dental implants can last forever. Like with natural teeth, plaque and tartar can collect on your full mouth dental implants, bringing problems for your implant, neighboring natural teeth, and the gums.

Gum health is particularly important for the long-term success of your implant. Poor oral care can allow the bacterial buildup around the implant to cause inflammation and peri-implant disease; peri-implant mucositis, which is similar to gingivitis; or peri-implantitis, which is similar to periodontitis.

It is vital to realize that if you lost your teeth because of gum infection, you are at a higher danger of getting peri-implant sickness. Studies have demonstrated this extra risk is available regardless of whether the infected tooth is removed, but the gum infection is still present in the mouth.

Peri-implant disease can result in the loss of attachment of the implant-supported tooth, causing it to fail. Unlike inflammation around your teeth, the loss of attachment can be disastrous both in extent and severity, quickly creating a dish- or well-shaped loss of bone around the infected implant. Losing the implant can result in faster bone loss.

Cleaning Your Full Mouth Dental Implants

Your dentist or dental hygienist assumes a key role in keeping your dental implants free of contaminations. There are a few components to contemplate while picking the correct instruments for proficient cleaning, including:

• Nature of the debris (whether soft – food and biofilm; or hard – tartar and calcified material)
• Location of deposits
• Stubbornness with which stains adhere

Daily cleaning of all surfaces above and below your gumline is necessary for preventing peri-implant disease. Your dental hygienist will help you select instruments for cleaning your teeth that will not harm the crown, abutment, or the implant itself. Here are some tips to achieve this:

• Use a soft manual or electric toothbrush to clean your teeth twice a day. Replace your manual toothbrush every three months.
• Use the cleaning aids recommended by your dental team, such as irrigation devices or interdental brushes to clean spaces between your teeth.
• Brush all surfaces of your teeth – top, inside, and outside surfaces.

It is important to maintain a smooth and highly polished abutment surface since any scratches can harbor bacteria. As such, your dentist will use special scalers and instruments to work on your implants during dental checkups, and metal-based instruments for your natural teeth, which don’t scratch the same way.

Final note on Dental Implants

Although it may seem like taking care of implants is cumbersome, most people do it adequately enough considering that the long-term success rates of implants are over 95 percent. However, it is important that you exercise proper oral hygiene to prevent peri-implant disease that may hamper the health, function, and maintenance of your implants.