Dental Implants — Tallahassee, FL

Initial Dental Implant Consultation

Placing dental implants requires a fair amount of planning as well as careful examination. Without first looking at your current oral health and the teeth that need to be replaced, we can’t build a proper treatment plan to rebuild your smile. The consultation also provides you an opportunity to ask any questions you may have. We’ll confirm if another treatment would be more appropriate, especially if you have a pre-existing condition that would make dental implant treatment too risky.

Dental Implant Surgery

Before beginning, we will ensure that you are numb, comfortable, and ready to begin your surgery. We’ll also administer sedation if you requested it ahead of treatment. Next, Dr. Rasmussen will create a tiny incision in your gums to access your jawbone. Then, he will make a small hole in the bone for the placement of your implant. After the implant has been placed, he’ll close the gum tissue up with stitches so the implant can start to heal and integrate. Before you leave, he’ll go over the best aftercare steps to ensure no complications appear during your recovery.

Dental Implant Osseointegration & Abutment

Once the dental implants are placed, you’ll leave our office to begin a 4 to 6 monthlong healing period. This is known as osseointegration and it’s designed to give the implant time to fuse with the jawbone. Thanks to the titanium post, the human body can receive it safely, much like implants in other parts of the body (such as the hip).

When the implant has fully fused, an abutment can be attached. This small cap is meant to provide additional stability to the restoration. To place it, Dr. Rasmussen carefully opens the gum tissue to expose the implant, then places the abutment and stitches the gums closed one more time. The gums will then begin to heal around the abutment over the next few weeks.

Delivery of Dental Restoration(s)

After this is complete, you’ll come back into our office, where Dr. Rasmussen will place your permanent crown, bridge, or denture on top of the implant to restore your entire tooth from the roots up. The restoration will be customized to not only look natural from all angles, but keep the bite as even as possible. Your replacement tooth is created by a trusted dental lab outside of the office, so you can expect it to last for decades and even reflect light similarly to natural enamel.

Missing One Tooth

A single implant can be placed into the jawbone between two healthy teeth and topped with a porcelain crown without disturbing the nearby dental structure at all. This is much less invasive compared to a bridge, in which the neighboring teeth have to be filed down to support the prosthetic.

Missing Multiple Teeth

For consecutive missing teeth or those located throughout the mouth, implants can also serve as the foundation for a bridge or partial denture. This gives the prosthetics a strength and security removable ones simply can’t match.

Missing All Teeth

Even people missing all of their teeth along a single row can benefit from implant dentistry. Using a small number of implant roots, a full denture can be anchored to the jawbone that looks better, provides a stronger bite, and lasts longer than any traditional one.

Learn More About Implant Dentures

Learn More About All-On-4

Types of Dental Implants

The first question we’ll need to answer is: how many teeth are missing? A single implant is enough to fill in a single gap, but when you’ve lost multiple teeth, the exact number of posts you’ll need depends on the situation. Two dental implants and a fixed bridge can replace 3 to 6 teeth in a row. If an entire arch is gone, full dentures can be supported by as few as 4 implants. Obviously, the exact number of implants needed and the kind of prosthetic tooth or teeth they support have a significant influence on the final cost of the procedure.

What are the Stages of Dental Implant Treatment?

During your consultation, Dr. Rasmussen will lay out the different stages involved in the process and explain how much you can expect to pay for each. You can normally expect the procedure to involve surgery to place the implants as well as the attachment of an abutment; receiving prosthetic teeth is usually the final step and can take multiple visits. Keep in mind that some patients will need to pay for additional treatments. Implants are more likely to fail if you don’t have enough bone density in your jaw or if your gums are currently infected; such oral health issues need to be taken care of before anything else.

Are Dental Implants Worth the Investment?

While dental implants initially seem to cost more than other kinds of tooth replacement, they’re certainly worth the price. Not only do they look and feel natural while letting you chew all your favorite foods, but they can also prevent resorption in the jaw (the natural consequence of losing teeth).

Unlike other restorations, dental implants can potentially last the rest of your life. This can make them the most cost-effective option since you won’t have to pay for new ones nearly as often. Of course, if you want to make sure you get the most out of your investment, you should make sure your implants are being placed by an expert; fortunately, Dr. Rasmussen is a board-certified periodontist who is well experienced in performing this particular procedure.

Does My Dental Insurance Cover Dental Implants?

Many plans won’t pay for implants, but others might; it all depends on who your carrier is. Bear in mind that even if your insurance won’t pay for the posts themselves, it may help cover certain related procedures such as treatment for gum disease. Our practice offers in-network savings, but we’re more than happy to file a claim for an out-of-network provider or offer third-party financing through CareCredit.

Bone Grafting

Once a tooth goes missing, the jawbone in the area slowly starts to shrink and atrophy. This is because the body senses that there is no tooth to support, so it begins to resorb nutrients directly from the bone. This can make it too thin or brittle to support dental implants. With a bone graft, however, Dr. Rasmussen can use a patient’s own bone, donated bone, or a lab-made grafting material to reverse this process and encourage the growth of new, healthy tissue. A bone graft can usually be completed in a single appointment, and after just a few months of healing, a patient who previously wasn’t able to get dental implants will now be ready to receive their new roots.

3D Imaging

Using 3D imaging, Dr. Rasmussen is able to create a highly-detailed model of a patient’s jawbone and surrounding oral structures. This helps him take all the guesswork out of someone’s implant placement procedure. He can identify the perfect locations within the jawbone for the new roots, determine the thickness of the bone, and even figure out the angle the implant should be placed at to provide the strongest foundation possible for the new teeth. By the time the actual procedure starts, a positive result is practically guaranteed.

Bone Regeneration

In addition to the gums themselves, gum disease can also break down the underlying jawbone that supports the hard and soft tissues of the mouth. This is largely why gum disease is the leading cause of adult tooth loss in the U.S! For patients who have experienced this, bone regeneration is used to build the jawbone back up so it can be strong and thick enough to support an implant. A collagen membrane is applied directly to the bone where it needs to grow, and this material stimulates the generation of new tissue exactly where a patient is lacking.

Ridge Preservation

Often, before a patient receives dental implants, any broken or decayed teeth have to be removed. In order to ensure that implants can be placed as quickly as possible after an extraction, the surrounding bone must be looked after. Ridge preservation is a procedure that helps protect and strengthen the nearby jawbone that used to support a tooth so it will be thick enough to hold an implant. Depending on a patient’s specific situation, this treatment can be performed on the same day as an extraction.

Make Oral Hygiene a Priority

It’s true that dental implants hold restorations that are made from inorganic material (porcelain), which means they cannot develop decay like natural enamel can. However, that does not mean you can skip your oral care routine. Bacteria can still attack the gum tissue surrounding the implant, further proving the importance of maintaining brushing and flossing every day.

To ensure the best oral care routine possible, make sure to:

• Brush twice a day for at least two minutes at a time
• Use fluoridated toothpaste to kill cavity-causing bacteria
• Floss once a day to remove food debris stuck in between teeth (and from the area underneath the restoration)
• Use an optional oral rinse for added protection
• Make sure not to brush too hard as this can cause gum recession

Protect Your Dental Implants

Dental implants are made from high-quality, durable, and lifelike porcelain to ensure the best longevity possible for your tooth replacement. However, that does not make them indestructible. Much like natural teeth, implant restorations need to be regularly protected from forced sudden trauma or long-term habits that can break them down. This includes injuries that could occur while playing contact sports or habits like teeth grinding and clenching (also known as bruxism.)

The good news is you can easily avoid permanent damage to your replacement teeth by wearing a mouthguard or nightguard, depending on your needs. Ideally, you’ll want to choose a custom-made nightguard as they are far more effective at protecting teeth, last longer, and feel more comfortable overall compared to store-bought solutions. Our office will gladly partner you with a trusted dentist in the area to design your future oral appliance.

Schedule Regular Dental Checkups

Even if there are no issues with your dental implant, it is still crucial that you maintain routine follow-up appointments with our office immediately after your implants are placed. These visits are separate from the routine exams and cleanings you are already doing every six months. Not only can Dr. Rasmussen confirm the health of your dental implant, but he can also make sure if there are any signs of trouble that need to be addressed.

Once your implant is placed, we need to make sure that the healing process goes as planned and that your mouth does not reject the implant after it’s attached to the jawbone. Furthermore, we want to confirm that no underlying symptoms (i.e. inflammation, swelling, gum recession etc.) are present, all which are signs of a dental infection caused by the implant. Even though this is unlikely to occur, it’s better to be safe rather than sorry.