Preparing For Your Dental Implant Treatment

Ipswich prosthodontist, Hiten Pabari, offers advice on getting ready for your new tooth implant

We have discussed, in a number of blogs, the reasons why so many people are choosing to have dental implants rather than dentures. In today’s blog, we are going to take a look at some of the things that you can do, once you have taken the decision to have them, to prepare yourself for the treatment and the success of the placement.

Naturally, you will be in excellent hands at the Foxhall Dental Clinic when you have your procedure and our clinical team are highly skilled and experienced. This doesn’t mean that you can’t contribute though to the success of the treatment, and there are a number of things that you can do to help.

Good oral health

There is little or no point in placing dental implants into an unhealthy mouth. Blog readers will know by now that periodontal diseases, including peri-implantitis, are one of the biggest threats to an implant. This later stage gum disease can damage the bone structure that holds the implant in place and can cause it to become loose and, ultimately, fail altogether. Before we carry out your implant treatment, we will ensure that any problems that might affect the implant are treated so that the implant starts its life in a healthy environment. This will greatly improve the chances of a successful outcome of the treatment.

Smoking and drinking

Related to the above is a call for you to take responsibility for your overall oral health. For those of you about to have implants placed, you will need to stop some lifestyle habits that can lead to an unhealthy mouth.

Top of this list is smoking. Not only does this increase the risk of gum disease, in itself a major threat to a dental implant, but smoking also narrows the tiny blood vessels in the gums where the implant is placed. This means that there is less ability to fight infections and your new implant will be at risk because of this in addition to any problems caused by gum disease.

Alcohol consumption is a similar threat if carried out to excess. In both cases, our Ipswich dental implant team will request that you forgo both smoking and excessive drinking for a period of time both before and after the treatment. We would advise that you maintain this afterwards too. Even once your implant is fully established, its longevity could be harmed if you start smoking again.

Improved fitness can be beneficial

In addition to stopping smoking and drinking, we would advise that you do what you can to improve your fitness. This doesn’t mean that you have to ‘pound the streets’ excessively or even join a gym. The little things like walking a little more, taking stairs instead of lifts and cycling if you can, will all help to improve your general overall fitness levels. Why does this matter? Because, as mentioned above, blood flow can have an impact if we have to fight an infection. A healthy heart will encourage better blood flow to areas where needed and will help to fight off any infections surrounding your newly placed tooth implant.

Consider your post treatment diet

When you have had your dental implant placed, there will be a period of around 3 months where you will need to be very careful about what and how you eat. Initially, you will need to be on a liquid diet before moving to soft foods such as mashed potatoes.

There is no getting away from it that this is one of the things about having a new tooth implant that people find difficult. We recommend that you use some of the time before your appointment to do a little research and perhaps print out some recipes from the internet. If you are organised and have freezer space, you might even want to prepare some meals in advance. Whilst this may not help the implant any more than just liquidising your normal food, it will hopefully make your dietary regime more interesting and make the 3 months (approx) pass more easily.

Having a dental implant placed might seem to be quite an undertaking and there are certainly a number of issues which you should be aware of before choosing them. We find that patients who have had implants placed at our Ipswich dental clinic don’t regret it in the slightest. The small sacrifice of three months or so waiting for the implant to fully integrate with the bone is well worth it for the twenty years or more of trouble free eating that they can provide.

If you would like to find out more about dental implants or would like to discuss any of the issues that we raise in this blog, we are always happy to talk to you. You can contact the Foxhall Dental Practice by calling us on 01473 258396.