Straight Teeth in Less Time
The Shape Of Your Face: Will Dental Implants Change It?
Lois Murray
Dental implants can be transformative, especially if you've had missing teeth for an extended period of time. The gap in your smile has been filled (with a prosthetic tooth indistinguishable from the real thing), and you can enjoy a wider range of foods once again. Sure, your quality of life will be transformed for the better. But do dental implants transform the shape of your face?
Preventing Unwelcome Changes
For most patients, dental implants prevent unwelcome changes to your face. A missing permanent tooth triggers some changes to the jawbone where the tooth was located. This can be either your mandible (lower jaw) or maxilla (upper jaw). These bones must maintain a specific level of density—needed to give the teeth all the physical support they need during biting and chewing.
Loss of Density
Site-specific loss of density occurs when a tooth is lost. The bone surrounding the empty dental socket loses some of its mass, as it no longer must support the bite pressure experienced by the tooth. The loss of a single permanent tooth is unlikely to affect your physical appearance. The loss of several teeth can create a sunken look in the lower section of your face.
Vertical Dimension
This sunken look can emphasize fine lines and wrinkles and can prematurely age a person. However, even someone with multiple missing teeth can be a candidate for dental implants. Multiple missing teeth can be replaced with implant-supported dentures (a small number of implants used to affix a denture), which will restore the vertical dimension of the bite. This is an instance where dental implants can certainly transform (or restore) a person's appearance.
Halting Bone Loss
The placement of a dental implant into your jaw will halt any subsequent bone loss. This is in fact the best thing for your jaw, as opposed to a dental prosthesis that isn't surgically implanted, like standard dentures or a dental bridge. Marginal bone loss will continue unless the bone is stimulated by the presence of the implant and its artificial tooth—essentially tricking the bone into keeping its density.
So will dental implants change the shape of your face? Yes and no. For some patients, implant-supported dentures can restore the shape of their face. But for others, a single tooth implant will help prevent any unwelcome changes in the years to come.
Reach out to a dentist in your area for more information about dental implants.
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I had braces when I was a kid. Back then, you had to wear those metal wires and rubber bands for what seemed like forever. When I saw that my child’s teeth were going to be crooked like mine, I was dreading the years of braces and orthodontist appointments and limited diets that I saw stretching ahead of us. I was pleased to find out that braces today are very different from braces when I was a kid. They don’t need to be worn for nearly as long, and they aren’t as intrusive, either. My daughter got braces that can barely be seen, and she can remove them when she eats, so she doesn’t have to give up her favorite foods. I was so impressed that I started a blog to talk about modern day tooth straightening techniques. Braces have come a long way.