You’ve waited for this day and now it’s arrived, your smile has been restored with a dental implant! Congratulations! Making the decision to replace your tooth with a dental implant is one of the best investments you can make in your oral health. Now that your tooth has been restored you’ll need to know how to take care of your implant so you can make the most of your investment. With the right home care, dental implants offer great longevity and have the potential to last for a lifetime. Here’s how you can care for your dental implants in Reston.
What is a Dental Implant?
To understand how best to care for your implants, it’s important to first understand what they are and how they work. A dental implant restores both your root and your tooth. A titanium post is surgically placed into your bone and will naturally integrate with it over a healing period of about 3-4 months. This not only creates the foundation for your new tooth, but it also helps to keep your bone healthy and stimulated.
Once your implant is ready to support your new tooth, a porcelain crown is customized to provide both beauty and function to your smile and then attached to your dental implant. It’s shaded to match your existing teeth and designed to give you all the function you had with your natural tooth. This means that you’re able to eat, chew, talk and smile as you were used to doing before your tooth loss.
Caring for Your Implant
Because your implant closely mimics your natural tooth, you’ll also be able to brush and floss it as you were used to doing. It’s very important to establish a good home care routine that keeps your implant clean and healthy, which ensures its longevity.
At your six-month cleanings and checkups, Dr. Myles will be monitoring your implant through examinations and x-rays. Our highly skilled hygiene team will help to keep your implant clean, and you may notice that we use special instruments during your cleaning for your implant crown. This is to ensure that we remove all the excess plaque buildup and bacteria that can occur around your implant crown.
Contact Smiles By Myles
It’s our goal to help you achieve and maintain a healthy and beautiful smile for a lifetime. Choosing dental implants to replace a missing tooth is a sound investment as your implant can serve you for many years. Contact Smiles By Myles today to schedule your next routine cleaning and checkup appointment.