If you are one of the 74% of UK adults who has lost a tooth, you may be very tempted to just live with the gap. This can be especially tempting if you have just lost the odd tooth at the side or back, where it doesn’t affect your smile so much.

At Orpington Dental Care, we encourage all our patients who have lost teeth to get replacements of some kind for a number of reasons. In Orpington, dental implants are the best kind of replacement for a single missing tooth.

Why fill the gap?

If the surrounding teeth are in good health, you don’t really want to compromise them by leaving a gap. When there is a gap in the teeth, the bone and where the missing tooth used to be start to shrink through lack of use. Also, our teeth support each other in their places and when there is a gap that support is compromised, so the teeth can start to move around and tip over into the gap, even fall out. So, losing one tooth can, over time, lead to losing more teeth.

What can dental implants do?

In Orpington, dental implants work by replacing the root of the tooth as well as the crown. They are the only kind of tooth restoration that does this. Having a replacement root means that the cells in the jawbone and the gum can continue to renew themselves and keep both strong and healthy. If you opt for a bridge, you won’t get a replacement root, plus you will lose the 2 perfectly good teeth on either side of the gap, as these will have to be ground down to become the abutments for the bridge to fix onto.

When you have a dental implant, you will need to take half a day off work to have minor oral surgery under local anaesthetic to have it fitted. Once in place, the implant needs several weeks to heal and integrate with the jawbone. When that’s done, you can come back and we will fit your custom-made porcelain crown, which will blend in seamlessly with your other teeth.

Orpington dental implants can last for decades if they are well looked after.