At the completion of any procedure, once you are released from the dental office, your dentist will give you post-treatment or post-operative instructions. These are essential for any patient to follow if you want to ensure the success of your dental procedure. In the case of dental implants, observance of these post-operative instructions will help patients prolong the life span of the implant system and take care of this investment. Dental implants are not cheap, so to enjoy its amazing benefits taking good care of implants is a must.
While the success of your dental implant placement procedure is dependent on a lot of things - the skill of your dentist, observation of infection control protocols, and the health of the patient and the bone - it will also rely on your own efforts. Just as everyone is encouraged to take active participation on taking care of their natural teeth, the same is true after the implant system is installed in the mouth.
The following are some of the very important tips you can use:
Do not subject your implants to excessive force. This is most especially true when your implants have just been installed and not yet stable. Ideally, a fully stable implant will have integrated with the bone, giving it much strength and power to endure all kinds of forces. As a foreign material, you should still understand that implants will never compare to the natural tooth so always keep in mind that you have “screws” embedded within your jaw and especially during the 2-6 months of stabilization, do no direct any kind of force on the area.
Report any untoward events observed along the area of the dental implants. Ideally, a properly performed dental implant placement procedure should meet great success; however, there could be some unforeseen issues that may bring some danger to the implant system. When this happens, you should not hesitate to see your dentist to show what is happening. Your chance of getting through with any problem shall increase when proper address is forwarded to it, so delaying reports to your dentist may give you bigger harm.
Observe exemplary oral hygiene measures. Just as plaque can disrupt the health of your teeth and gums, it can also compromise the life of your dental implant system. Understand that your implants depend on the bone to remain in the mouth and when the bone becomes infected with disease, support will fail and the implants will lose its stability. Observing proper hygiene measures will be essential; it will ensure the health of the bone that holds the implant in place, and so help protect the investment that you made.
- Stop smoking. Smoking is an activity discouraged for a lot of reasons. A single stick of cigarette is ridden with harmful chemicals that can combine with the blood that circulates all over the body, disrupting the normal physiologic processes that occur. Smokers are contraindicated for dental implant placement procedures because the chemicals in cigarettes disrupt proper healing, so unless they are able to stop this worthless habit, they are bad candidates for the procedure. So, even if you passed for the procedure, make sure not to touch another stick of cigarette, if you want your implants to enjoy a longer lifespan in your mouth.