Dental Implants Are the Gold Standard

Dr. Casagrande: I am asked all the time, "What is a dental implant, and am I a good candidate for dental implants?" Dental implants basically are a manmade, specialized screw that is placed in your jawbone. There are different shapes, there are different textures, and there's different screw design. But conceptually they're a very special design, specially coated, specially treated titanium screw that is placed back in your jawbone to give you a manmade root instead of a god-given root for your tooth. In asking if I'm a good candidate, there are many things that must be taken into account. But the most critical are the following. You have to be in relatively good health. In addition to that, patients need to have sufficient quality and quantity of bone where the implants are being placed to have a good long-term result. Dental implants are not to be thought of as good as or better than or worse than your natural teeth. The truth is they're totally different. But if you, in fact, lose a tooth or lose all of your teeth, the closest thing we have that can come anywhere near to being as kind and appropriate and as aesthetic and functional as your god-given teeth are dental implants. This only occurs when they're done by someone with the appropriate experience and expertise to give you that kind of result. But today, dental implants can be achieved in such a fashion that many times dentists can't even tell a patient has dental implants until they take x-rays.