When people lose their teeth, they can replace them with fixed bridgework, full or partial dentures and dental implants. Dental implants have become the option that most people choose first.
This is because they give better chewing power without compromising any other remaining teeth. They will never slip or slide in the mouth and people can relax, knowing that their replacement teeth will look and behave exactly as their natural teeth did.
However, sometimes patients are told that they cannot have dental implants because their jawbone has deteriorated and will not be able to grip onto the implants firmly enough. Jawbones deteriorate after tooth loss because they no longer receive impact signals when the teeth from upper and lower jaws meet together. These impact signals indicate that they are still in use and without them, the bone starts to resorb, quickly becoming smaller and less dense.
If you have been told you cannot have dental implants, it is worth coming to David Madruga in Marylebone for a second opinion. David has been fitting people with dental implants for many years and is skilled in using the various techniques that enhance jawbones to accept dental implants.
One of these is sinus lifts. Let’s take a look at it in more detail.
Sinus lifts
When the teeth have been missing from your upper back jaw for some length of time, the sinus cavity in the bone gets bigger and there is less bone below it to make a channel to hold a dental implant. If the dentist put one in, the end of it would be wiggling around in thin air. It would not be able to withstand the forces created by chewing, which, on the average male can be as much as 220lbs or 97kg.
At David Madruga, we can solve this by gently pushing up sinus cavity lining and then putting bone graft material into the space created between the bone and the sinus cavity lining. The bone graft can be taken from elsewhere in your body, or from an animal source.
After several weeks of integration, you can then get your implants put in.
Why not give us a call to find out more?