Just because your teeth implants are known to last a lifetime, that isn’t necessarily true. A lifetime is a vague number and when you really start to crunch numbers with your dentist, you will find that we generally advise our patients that their implants will last for several decades when cared for correctly.

This is still an amazing duration and one of the main reasons as to why this treatment is so often recommended by professionals and favoured by patients. For young and old alike, titanium implants provide a safe, effective and long lasting option to replace missing teeth and support and secure dentures.

However, we do need to discuss dental implant maintenance in Marylebone if we are wanting to maintain our investment and ensure that they remain a positive experience for us. Even though there is a 98% success rate, there are small chances that there will be a complication and it is best that you are made aware of the warning signs so that we are able to act quickly, potentially saving the site and ensuring success in the long run.

Dental implant maintenance in Marylebone is a regular process. You will need to have your implants serviced by a professional, just like you need to have your teeth checked over at least twice a year, and you will need to care for them at home.

Think of them as your natural teeth, as they are designed to function exactly like this. You need to brush your teeth twice daily and avoid foods that are too harsh, too often, such as sugary drinks, staining coffee, tea, curry or wine.

The same applies with your dental implant maintenance in Marylebone. You need to brush around the crown or bridge that is attached to the implant, ensuring that it is free of debris. You may be given special tools in order to do this, or you may find that brushing and flossing with regular equipment will suffice for your situation.

How will I know if there is a problem?

Generally, you will see redness, swelling or feel pain at the site of the implant if you are experiencing some kind of complication. This identifies infection and needs to be dealt with immediately by a professional in order to reduce the likelihood of rejection of the implant.

More often than not, such an infection will occur in the early days of the procedure having taken place, when the body is under most stress and is healing from the surgical procedure. Although, this is not always the case.

If you have been improperly cleaning the site of your implant, infection can occur at any time. Make sure that you are constantly vigilant of any changes that occur within your mouth so that you can quickly approach a professional to ensure a swift and appropriate reaction to your concerns. We look forward to helping you understand the importance of caring for your new, replacement teeth. By maintaining your investment, you very well may be able to enjoy a lifetime of use out of your dental implant treatment.

Dental implants are a popular, long term, and therefore effective form of restorative dental care that have been prominent within the field of dentistry (whilst proving successful in replacing missing teeth) for a large number of years. Within the field of dentistry many patients’ may be familiar with the term ‘dental implant’ however they may be unsure of how to maintain their new smile.

Staying on top of your Dental Implants Maintenance in Marylebone

After receiving your dental implants using state of the art technology at our modern, clean, and comfortable dental clinic it is extremely important we correctly take care of your post-treatment smile.

Helping you take care of your dental implants, in the comfort of your own home

Many patients may believe that their Dental Implants Maintenance in Marylebone are restricted to the walls of our dental surgery, however, this is not the case! After finalising the treatment process our professional dentists will provide you with a personalised dental hygiene routine to work around your unique dental case.

Ensuring your implants are making the correct progress..

In addition to brushing and cleaning your new implants at home, our team may also ask you to visit our clinic routinely to monitor your new smile, a few examples of these checks may include regular oral assessments or x-rays (as well as regular hygiene consultations).

How can external factors affect my dental implants?

Many of our patients may be surprised when we express the importance of a healthy lifestyle (and therefore diet) when it comes to taking care of their post-treatment smile. To elaborate further, we may provide our patients with dietary advice to ensure long term stability is achieved.

How long will my dental implants last?

Implant dentistry is designed with durability in mind, many patients may view their dental implants as a substantial financial investment which is why it is so important they stand the test of time. Much like any dental treatment, the durability of implant dentistry will vary greatly depending on the individual dental case, despite this, however, with the correct aftercare regime dental implants can last for many years and therefore serve as an excellent addition to any smile.

What are dental implants?

Dental implants are essentially tiny titanium screws that are inserted within the jaw and act as a supportive base for the abutment (commonly referred to within the field of dentistry as a ‘connector’) and the synthetic porcelain crown.

Are dental implants right for you?

If you are an individual who is suffering from the loss of a single tooth, multiple teeth, or even a whole row of teeth within the mouth then dental implants could be the perfect solution for you! At our clinic within the heart of Marylebone we offer a wealth of experience to all of our patients, finding the best possible form of tooth replacement for their unique dental case.

Get in touch with our clinic..

If the impeccable standard of dentistry on offer at our surgery interests you then you may wish to take a look at our website. Our potential patients can either contact us directly (via our email address or telephone number) however they can also ‘request a call back’ or send a photo of their pretreatment smile to David himself.

Millions of people in the UK have dental implants, a figure that is growing rapidly every single year. For people who have lost one or more teeth, they are a practical solution for most because they are healthy, stable and most of all, easy to manage. Dental implants’ maintenance in Marylebone is rather simple; all it requires is your standard brushing, flossing and twice-yearly dental check-ups with a hygienist. Here at David Madruga, we are passionate about dental implants maintenance in Marylebone, because we believe that looking after your oral health can be the key to that bright, perfect smile you have always dreamed of. With this in mind, if you would like to know more about how to manage your dental implants’ maintenance in Marylebone, read on.

Brush them at least twice a day

Like normal teeth, looking after your implants requires the simplest form of care, the first of which being regular brushing. Prosthetic teeth aren’t necessarily made from natural materials but they do attract the same oral ailments such as plaque/ tartar build-up and gum disease. Brushing your implants on a morning can help get rid of your morning breath and also kills bacteria that has accumulated in your mouth overnight. Similarly, brushing in the evening, before bed, helps reduce the build-up of plaque overnight which could reduce your chances of decay.

Buy a soft-bristled toothbrush

Hard bristles can damage your gums and cause bleeding. With this in mind, a soft-bristled toothbrush is always recommended for dental implants, because it is effective in removing plaque and tartar, but is kinder to the soft tissue in your mouth. If you have an electric toothbrush, keep using it, they tend to be more effective for cleaning teeth because they generate a higher number of strokes than the human hand can. And if you don’t, you should maybe think about investing in one, it will help maintain the longevity of your implants over time.

Try and brush around your implants

Regular brushing should do the trick when it comes to killing bacteria and plaque/tartar build-up, but it could help to pay particular attention to your implants. Studies have found that bacteria can become more concentrated around implants and can, if left untreated, cause peri-implantitis. In order to avoid this, you should use an angled toothbrush or a slim-head interdental brush, because this will help to eliminate hard-to-reach bacteria.

Use special floss

Flossing is an oral health must, but not all kinds are appropriate for implants. Crown and bridge floss is expertly designed to target under and around implants using strong nylon ends and a specially formulated middle, which gently cleans the implant surface and the porcelain close to the gums. The strong ends mean people are able to insert and floss between the prosthetics at the gumline and pull any food debris or bacteria out the other side. Most dentists recommend doing this after regular brushing, because it helps to distribute fluoride around the implants and destroy any lingering bacteria. 

Having gaps in your smile or cracked and damaged teeth may at first make it seem like your teeth are ruined, but there are simple solutions. With implants we can fill out and restore the smile you have lost with a simple procedure that uses natural looking and sturdy replacements.

If that has piqued your curiosity then here is some extra information about the dental implants process in Marylebone.

What are dental implants?

Dental implants are essentially small titanium screws that are inserted into your mouth, below your gum line and into the bone to act as a tooth root. The goal of the dental implants process in Marylebone is to ensure this new root fitted with a crown will fill in any gaps, or replace any teeth that are damaged to the point where other techniques cannot restore them.

The teeth are normally comprised of porcelain or acrylic resin and they are held in place with the titanium screw that we sterilise to prevent any infection of the implantation site. Then over time the bone of your jaw should heal back over this screw to provide a stable and sturdy platform for the new tooth to rest on, also strengthening the surrounding teeth.

The fitting process

As we previously mentioned the fitting of the implants is fairly simple and shouldn’t take longer than an hour to complete.

The procedure involves minor surgery whereby we insert the new tooth root into position within the jawbone. Before surgery we will also shape and shade your new implant crown to ensure that it blends in with the surrounding teeth after we fit it.

Is the treatment painful?

A common question patients have about this treatment, or any procedure, is whether it’s going to be painful or not. Generally with implants because it does involve minor surgery there may be some mild discomfort during the process, but your dentist will normally use a local anaesthetic to numb the area and limit pain as much as they can.

At David Madruga Implants our highly trained team will provide you with all the information you need about your options for sedation, to ensure you experience as little discomfort as possible during your dental implant treatment.

Tips for keeping your new teeth clean

After leaving the practice with your new tooth your main goal should be to keep your teeth and gums clean and healthy as you heal. Failure to do so could lead to inflammation and infection setting in, which could become worse and cause further infection of additional teeth or even disintegration of your jawbone. To avoid this just lightly brush it as part of your normal cleaning routine, avoid pulling too deep with dental floss around the new tooth and skip mouthwash for a while, as the chemicals in some brands can irritate your gums as they try to heal.

Hopefully this has cleared up a few things about the treatment and our implant process. If you would like to schedule an appointment to restore your smile or you would like more information about the procedure, then please get in touch with our practice.

While dental implants are much easier to look after than other kinds of restorations such as dentures, this does not mean that once they are in and fused with your jawbone, you can forget all about them.

Dental implants are made of titanium, a strong, lightweight material that does not rust or corrode. The porcelain crowns cannot decay. But there is one mortal enemy of dental implants and that is gum disease. Gum disease is caused by a build-up of plaque, which gives off acids that attack the gums and then the bone underneath the gums if it is left uncontrolled.

When this happens to dental implants, we call the condition peri-implantitis. It is something you want to avoid and the best way to do this is to have a diligent oral healthcare routine at home.

When you have your dental implants fitted at David Madruga in Marylebone, you will be given specific instructions on how to take care of them and what your oral healthcare routine should now be. It is important that you follow these instructions.

Part of the instructions are to come back for regular hygienist sessions to remove plaque, and check-ups to make sure all is well with your dental implants.

It can sneak up on you

Peri-implantitis can sneak up on you, just like gum disease. You may not register any pain, or feel any unusual lumps or bumps with your tongue during the early stages. But by the time you do feel pain or can feel anything with your tongue, you could be in trouble.

Check-ups

At David Madruga, we will keep an eye on your dental implants with examinations that will include the use of x-rays so that we can see what is going on under the gums.

If there is a problem, and we catch it early, we can normally solve it with some minor remedial treatment.

We may update your healthcare instructions after each check-up, so please stick to the new instructions.

If you stay true to your cleaning routines and check-up schedules, there’s no reason why your dental implants should not last for at least 15 years, and maybe for decades.

Getting dental implants is not just a quick in and out and Bob’s your uncle. If you decide to go for this method of tooth replacement, you are looking at a series of appointments stretching out over a matter of months rather than one simple appointment.

The consultation

The first stage when you decide to get dental implants in Marylebone with David Madruga is to come in for a consultation. David will make a thorough examination of your teeth and jaw, including beneath the gums to find out what condition your jawbone is in. This means x-rays and scans. If your jawbone is strong and healthy, David will go ahead and put together a careful plan to site the implants, avoiding any nerves or blood vessels.

Preparatory treatments

If your jawbone needs help before you can have implants, David can carry out a bone graft or a sinus lift. Both treatments add extra bone material into the jawbone to strengthen it and get it back to renewing itself rather than being in a process of resorption. This can add several weeks to your treatment time.

Implant surgery

This is carried out under local anaesthetic, and if you are nervous, you can also have either oral or intravenous sedation to help you deeply relax throughout the surgery. Placing the implants involves opening up the gum and creating new implant channels in the jawbone. This has to be done carefully.

Osseointegration

This is a crucial part of the dental implant process. It takes 2-6 months, depending on your body’s healing speed, for your jawbone to bond with the implants by growing new tissue all over them. By the end of the process, the 2 will be fused together. During this time, you will gradually move from a liquid diet to a soft food diet.

New crowns

When osseointegration is complete, you can have new handmade porcelain crowns fitted. These will match your other teeth in size, shape and colour.

Maintenance

Twice daily brushing, daily flossing, regular hygienist cleanings. This is all you need to do to maintain your dental implants. Do this diligently and they could last for decades.

Dental implants may have been around for more than 30 years but the innovations keep on coming, and we love sharing them with you at David Madruga in Marylebone.

One of the biggest frustrations with having dental implants fitted has always been having to wait so long between appointments for healing to happen. In the past, it took about six months between having your dental implants fitted and getting the porcelain crowns put on. This was so that the implants could have plenty of time to integrate with the jawbone, and the time it takes for the two to integrate is still vital to the success of dental implants. Things could take even longer if teeth had to be removed first, which meant more healing time.

However, for many people, especially super-busy Londoners and people who work abroad a lot, having to have several appointments before the process was finished could make life very complicated.

Now it is possible to have immediate placement for dental implants. This means that if you do need have to failing teeth extracted before replacing them with dental implants, we can do that first and then follow up immediately with inserting your dental implants. We can even put on your crown straightaway, so that you walk out with your new tooth already in place. That can save you 6–9 months of healing time.

You still have to heal

Don’t be fooled though. You still need to allow your implants to heal into your jawbone. This means being very careful and starting off on liquid foods for a good week before progressing to soft foods and then slowly, over time, introducing more challenging foods.

You may perhaps also be able to take advantage of our technique that uses protein rich in growth factors (PRGF) spun out from your blood to speed up the healing time. Ask us if this is possible.

So many ways to use dental implants

Dental implants can be used to replace any number of teeth from a single knocked-out tooth to a whole arch. One implant can support up to three teeth, and we have great techniques for whole arch replacement that reduce the number of implants required.

If you have had your teeth replaced with dental implants from David Madruga – congratulations! You now have new teeth to enjoy. Once the healing phase is complete, you should experience all the functionality and aesthetics of a natural smile. All you need to do now is make sure that you take steps to maintain your dental implants according to instructions from a member of our team.

Check-ups

Directly after treatment, you will have frequent check-ups to ensure that healing is taking place as planned. Once this period is over, you simply need to visit the dentist for your regular check-ups and if you ever have any issues. We keep a close eye on your dental implants, as well as any remaining teeth, to ensure a continued state of health.

Cleaning

When you visit David Madruga for your dental implant maintenance, we may also offer you a clean and polish. This is to remove any plaque or tartar which has built up on your teeth. Even though your prosthetic teeth will not decay like natural teeth, debris can still accumulate and this puts your gums at risk.

Replacement

As long as your mouth is healthy and there are no other unexpected issues, your dental implants should last a long time. This means a lifetime in some cases. However, the attached teeth may need replacing from time to time. How often depends on where they are in your mouth as different areas experience varied forces during chewing. There is also some variation in longevity depending on the type of material your replacement teeth are made from.

Dental implant maintenance is simple and non-invasive. Your dentist can give you more details on repairs and restorations as they become necessary.

At home

All that being said, the most important care for your dental implants takes place at home. Your dentist at David Madruga is there to support your efforts. We can give you advice about the best techniques to use, how to adapt your normal dental hygiene routine and what you should expect to see and feel as you get used to your dental implants. You need to take note of all this information and follow it to the letter for best results.

People often wonder just what goes on during the dental implant process. In Marylebone, at David Madruga, we make sure our patients fully understand what the dental implants process involves because it requires a certain amount of commitment.

Let’s take a look at what goes on with a very simple single dental implant insertion.

The consultation

During your consultation, Dr David Madruga Gonzalez will thoroughly examine your teeth to make sure that you are able to receive dental implants. The main thing he will be looking at is your jawbone in the area where you lost a tooth. It needs to be strong and dense in order to be able to withstand the strong forces created by biting and chewing without the implant coming loose. If you have been missing a tooth for quite a while, chances are that there will be some deterioration in the bone in that area. If so, you may need to have a bone graft, a sinus lift, or cheek implants to fix this.

If you are a smoker or have uncontrolled type 2 diabetes, it is going to interfere with your healing, so you will have to give up smoking and get the diabetes under control before you can have dental implants.

The surgery

This is performed under local anaesthetic, with either oral or intravenous sedation if you are anxious. There is not much pain because there are fewer nerves in the jawbone. Once the dental implant is in place, it takes about two months for the titanium post to integrate with the jawbone in a process called osseointegration. The implant stimulates the jawbone to grow new tissue all over it, to holding it in place like a natural tooth root.

Your new teeth

After osseointegration, you come back and Dr Madruga Gonzalez fits your new custom-made porcelain crown. And after that, you are good to go.

Care

You need to take good care of your implants with regular diligent cleaning to remove plaque. If it builds up enough to cause gum disease, this can lead to your implant becoming loose. If you take good care, however, your implant can last you for the rest of your life.

Our natural teeth tend to do their jobs with minimal fuss. They enable us to bite into food, chew it, and display a nice smile afterwards. When we lose them, we realise how much we relied on them. Temporary replacements can mimic the appearance of lost teeth, but they often don’t perform as we’d like them to, and they can be awkward to maintain.

Dr David Madruga Gonzalez has been solving the problems caused by missing teeth for many years. At his practice in Marylebone, advanced dental implant technology allows him to replace lost teeth with fully-functioning substitutes. These contemporary teeth fully integrate with your jawbone in a process called osseointegration. This means your replacement teeth have a long-lasting stability that temporary replacements can’t provide.

Lasting changes to your dental experience

Having dental implants can transform your quality of life. If you’re used to wearing dentures, you can wave goodbye to the messy adhesives that keep them in place. Once your implants are installed in your mouth, that’s where they’ll stay. You can relax and enjoy yourself at the dinner table, focussing on the deliciousness of the food without the nagging worry that your teeth might come unstuck and cause embarrassment.

Another advantage of this procedure is that it will help to keep the underlying firmness of your facial appearance. One of the effects of long-term temporary denture usage can be a deterioration in the face’s bone structure. After many years of this, you might develop a sunken, unhealthy appearance. Dental implants engage with the bone structure, ensuring it maintains its natural density.

A range of applications

It’s not just decay that leads to the need for new teeth. You can lose one suddenly, for example while playing sports. Implant dentistry will replace this lost tooth with one that looks and feels natural.

Dr David Madruga Gonzalez will talk you through the details of this life-changing procedure in a relaxing consultation. Careful dental measurements are taken to maximise the effectiveness of your treatment. After the work is done, you’ll be able to enjoy the oral health benefits for decades to come.