Dental Implants – Dumfries, VA

Initial Dental Implant Consultation

During your consultation, our team will learn the details of your situation. For example, we will learn about your medical history, ask about your goals for treatment, and thoroughly examine your mouth. We may also use our advanced CBCT scanner to get detailed information about your jawbone and other important oral structures. Based on what we discover, Dr. Shinwari can start planning the details of your implant journey.

Some patients need preliminary treatment, such as a bone graft or tooth extractions, before they can move forward with tooth replacement. Others can immediately start looking forward to their dental implant placement procedure.

Dental Implant Surgery

As a highly trained oral surgeon, Dr. Shinwari is one of the best people you could trust to perform your dental implant surgery. Often, he even uses surgical guides to ensure that the implants are placed as precisely as possible in the jawbone.

Many patients are surprised by how easy the surgical process is. After administering anesthesia and sedation (if necessary), Dr. Shinwari will create incisions in your gums and carefully place your implants into your jawbone. Then, the incisions will be closed. Most patients are able to return to work or school within a few days of their procedure.

Dental Implant Osseointegration & Abutment Placement

During the months after your surgery, a biological process known as osseointegration should take place. Basically, your jawbone will fuse with your dental implants, thereby allowing them to serve as an incredibly strong base for the teeth that you will receive in the future.

After adequate osseointegration has occurred, you might undergo a second minor surgery. The tops of your implants will be exposed, and healing caps will be attached to them. Later, those caps will be replaced by small connector pieces called abutments, which will serve to keep your new teeth in place. (Some patients receive abutments during their initial surgery, so no second procedure is necessary.)

Delivery of Dental Implant Restorations

This is perhaps the most exciting part of the dental implant process! A prosthodontist or your general dentist will take detailed impressions of your mouth and send them to a laboratory. The lab will then create your beautiful new crown, bridge, or denture, which will be carefully crafted to look great and function optimally. Once your restoration is ready, your care team will verify that it meets their rigorous quality standards before they attach it to your implants. Then, you can go off and enjoy your beautiful, strong smile!

Day-to-Day Benefits

As you go about your normal life, dental implants can make everything so much easier and better. For instance, they can prevent dentures from slipping without any adhesives. Not only is this more comfortable and a lot less messy, but it also allows you to talk and eat in front of others with more confidence because your prosthetic teeth will not budge.

In addition, unlike dentures that must be soaked and removed for cleaning, dental implants require the same care as natural teeth—simple brushing and flossing every day and regular checkups with your dentist.

Health Benefits

In terms of your well-being, dental implants play a vital role in keeping you healthy. They are strong and stable enough to let you eat anything you want, especially nutritious fruit, vegetables, whole grains, and lean meats. As a result, you can enjoy a healthier, happier quality of life.

Another health benefit of dental implants is that there’s no need to make any changes to healthy natural teeth in order to place implants, which means that if you have remaining teeth, we won’t need to alter them for your prosthetic. In contrast, dental bridges and partial dentures rely on these teeth for stability, which could eventually lead to additional loss.

Finally, dental implants help maintain the structure of the jawbone by stimulating the natural process of bone renewal. What does this mean? Your bite can remain strong, and your jawbone can keep its more youthful structure over time.

Long-Term Benefits

At first glance, the cost of dental implants may seem overwhelming compared to other options. However, if you have a longer-term perspective, you may find that they can actually save you money! Dentures and bridges must be replaced more frequently than dental implants—about every 5 to 15 years. When you add up the cost of these replacements over the years, it can add up to more than the original cost of implants.

Also, if you continue to maintain a healthy diet with your strong dental implants, you may have better health and even live longer!

Who Is a Good Candidate for Dental Implants?

Most healthy adults are good candidates for dental implants. Here are some of the most important criteria that we look to determine if dental implants are right for you:

• Good Overall Health: Placing dental implants is a surgical procedure, so you should be healthy enough to undergo a minor surgery.
• Great Oral Health: Cavities and gum disease can increase your risk of dental implant failure. Any oral health issues need to be addressed and eliminated ahead of time.
• Strong Jawbone: You need to have an adequate jaw to successfully support dental implants.

If you aren’t a good candidate for dental implants now, this doesn’t rule them out in the future. Many patients need to have preliminary procedures beforehand, like tooth extractions, gum disease treatment, and bone grafting. We are more than happy to help you get these procedures scheduled if needed so you can get back on track for dental implants.

Missing One Tooth

A single dental implant can be combined with a crown to replace a single tooth without needing to remove healthy enamel to make room for a traditional dental bridge. Our crowns are made out of materials that match the color and light-reflecting properties of enamel so that most people won’t be able to tell the difference between the prosthetic and the rest of your smile.

Missing Multiple Teeth

A dental bridge can be attached to a pair of dental implants. This lets us replace three or more teeth in a row with a minimal number of implant posts. We can also use dental implants to support partial dentures, which can be used to replace any number of teeth throughout your mouth.

Missing All Teeth

A denture that replaces all of the teeth in an arch only needs 4 to 8 dental implants to anchor it in place. At our oral surgery office, it is sometimes possible to have a restoration attached to your dental implant on the same day as the surgery so that you aren’t without teeth for too long.

Learn More About Dental Implant Dentures

Learn More About All-on-4 Dental Implants

Preliminary Treatments & Dental Implant Surgery

Do you need to complete gum disease therapy, bone grafting, or tooth extractions before getting dental implants? These procedures add to your overall costs, but they also set the foundation for a lifetime of strong, lasting replacement teeth.

The dental implant surgery itself will incur its own cost, which is influenced by the type of sedation that you receive. Note that you’ll be responsible for the cost of the surgical placement of the implants as well as the cost of your restoration, which will most likely go to your general dentist.

The Parts of Your Dental Implant

Each dental implant treatment comes with more unique variables than you may have thought, all of which will impact the overall price. Obviously, the more implant posts you receive, the more you’ll end up paying. However, each of the three parts of a dental implant – the post, the restoration, and the abutment that connects the two – can come from different manufacturers and brands, and be made from various materials. Depending on your specific needs, we’ll choose a specific type of implant and let you know how it affects your costs.

How Dental Implants Can Save You Money

Although dental implants in Dumfries might initially seem costly, they often prove a very wise investment in the long run. That’s because they can last several times longer than regular bridges and dentures, helping you avoid the costs of replacing your prosthetics every few years. Plus, you won’t need specialized maintenance products like you would with traditional tooth replacements, which could add up significantly over time.

Does My Dental Insurance Cover Dental Implants?

In many cases, your dental insurance might cover some aspect of the dental implant treatment process, such as the restoration and some preliminary procedures. However, insurance is unlikely to pay for the implants themselves or their surgical placement. Our team at the Oral & Facial Surgery Center of Virginia can help you understand how much your insurance plan covers and make sure you’re getting the most out of your benefits. 

Making Dental Implants Affordable

To help you afford the cost of your new smile, our team would be happy to help you apply for low-interest financing through CareCredit or Lending Club. Both of these third-party financiers offer a number of flexible payment plans to choose from, so there’s sure to be one that fits into your monthly budget. By paying for dental implants in smaller installments rather than in one lump sum, replacing your teeth becomes much more affordable!

3D Cone Beam Imaging/3D CT Scanning

With a cone beam computed tomography (CBCT) scanner, we can create a three-dimensional model of your mouth and jaw. This model contains much more detail than a traditional X-ray; with it, we can examine various soft tissues, nerve paths, craniofacial bones, and other structures that might affect dental implant placement.

There are many advantages to using a CBCT scanner as part of the dental implant process. For one thing, it aids us in the planning stage by giving us a chance to identify potential obstacles ahead of time. It also makes it easier to ensure that the dental implants are placed exactly where they need to go, making them much more likely to succeed in the long term. And since CBCT scans are painless and leave no radiation in your body afterward, they’re completely safe to use.

3D Printed Surgical Guide

Some dental implant cases need a more careful touch than others. For example, if you have lost all of your teeth in a single arch, the lack of landmarks will make it more difficult to see exactly where your dental implants are supposed to go. In such situations, it helps to have a 3D-printed surgical guide, which we can create based on a CBCT scan of your mouth.

The surgical guide will give us a clear indicator of where your implants need to be inserted in your jaw. The enhanced precision provided by the guide can make your treatment noticeably more comfortable and potentially reduce any associated swelling and bruising. Also, treatments performed with a surgical guide tend to require smaller incisions, which means your gums will need less time to recover afterward.

Antibacterial Coating

One of the most common causes of dental implant failure is an infection known as peri-implantitis. When the tissues holding your implant in place are attacked by harmful bacteria, they can be weakened over time. If the issue isn’t addressed quickly, your implant might come loose or fall out altogether.

To reduce the risk of an infection compromising your new teeth, we place dental implant posts with a special antibacterial coating. The properties of said coating help protect the implant and the area around it from the bacteria that can cause peri-implantitis. This simple measure can go a long way toward making sure that the healing process after implant placement goes smoothly.

Bone Grafting

For patients who have been missing teeth for a long period of time or have been using traditional prosthetics like a denture or bridge, bone grafting may be necessary. This is because when the bone isn’t being stimulated, it will erode. If there isn’t enough jawbone to surgically secure the dental implants in, it could prevent them from successfully being able to integrate within the mouth, causing them to fail.

Bone grafting involves placing bone from either a donor or a different site of your body into the areas of the jawbone that have deteriorated due to tooth loss. The surgical site will be closed, and over the next several months, the new bone will integrate with the existing bone to make it dense enough to undergo dental implant surgery.

Sinus Lifts

The maxillary sinuses are located within the upper jawbone, which can become an issue if you’re looking to have your upper back teeth replaced with dental implants. If the sinuses sit too low in the maxillary bone, surgery could risk the chance of penetrating them. In order to prevent this from happening, our board-certified oral surgeon, Dr. Shinwari, may need to conduct a sinus lift. This does exactly what the name implies—Dr. Shinwari will gently lift the sinuses and fill the additional area with grafting material to hold them in place.  

PRP/PRF Treatment

PRP/PRF treatment stands for “Platelet Rich Fibrin” and “Platelet Rich Plasma.” These are rich with key components of the blood that actually aid in the healing process whenever you have surgery, cut yourself, or are injured in other ways. Our team is able to extract PRP and PRF from your blood by placing a small sample of it into a centrifuge that separates it into layers. We can then inject it into the surgical site to promote faster healing and even reduce the risk of post-operative infection.

Ridge Expansion

In cases where a patient’s jawbone isn’t wide enough to support dental implants, our team can conduct a ridge expansion. This procedure involves creating a small space between the inner and outer areas of the ridge bone to place grafting material within. As the graft fuses with the existing jawbone, it will cause it to widen, creating enough room for dental implants to be placed.

What to Do Directly After Dental Implant Surgery

You should plan on resting for at least three or four days after implant surgery. In the meantime, you’ll need to take whatever steps you can to protect the blood clot that forms around the surgery site. A dislodged blood clot can result in dry socket, which is a painful condition that can slow down the entire healing process. Thus, to keep the blood clot in place, you’ll want to avoid certain actions, such as:

• Spitting
• Drinking from straws
• Smoking
• Directly touching the surgery site with your fingers or tongue

Common Side Effects When Recovering from Dental Implant Placement

Intermittent bleeding, swelling, and general discomfort are all common side effects of implant surgery. You can keep these symptoms under control by:

• Using gauze to put pressure on any areas where bleeding is occurring.
• Applying a cold compress for 10 minutes at a time over any swelling.
• Taking prescribed or over-the-counter medications to relieve discomfort.

Your post-surgical symptoms should gradually disappear as your mouth heals. If they seem to be getting worse instead, you might have developed an infection, or another type of complication might have occurred; give our office a call right away to see what your next steps should be.

Your Diet After Dental Implant Surgery

With any type of oral surgery, you want to avoid any foods that require excessive chewing while you’re recovering. You should plan on sticking to a soft food diet for at least a few days. Mashed potatoes, yogurt, scrambled eggs, and pasta are all examples of foods you can enjoy during the healing process. Soup can also be a great choice as long as it’s not too hot. You can return to your normal diet once your mouth feels normal again, but do not chew directly on the implant surgery site until you’ve received your final restoration.

Post-Op Health & Oral Hygiene

You need to keep the area around your implants clean to minimize your risk of infection. Naturally, this means brushing thoroughly at least two times a day. You’ll be able to brush normally the day after surgery, although you’ll need to be careful around the implants while the tissues around them are still recovering. Rinsing with salt water can also help by stopping the growth of harmful bacteria.  

What to Do After Your New Teeth Are Attached

The last step of the implant process is to attach a prosthetic to the implant posts. At this point, you may experience some minor sensitivity in your gums, but it won’t be anything you can’t manage without pain medication. There should not be any swelling or bleeding at this point, so please let us know right away if you notice these symptoms.

Make Oral Hygiene a Priority

Dental implants can’t develop cavities, but you still need to focus on keeping them as clean as possible. Otherwise, harmful bacteria could attack the tissues holding them in place and cause them to come loose. You should brush at least twice a day for at least two minutes at a time. Don’t forget to floss as well; it’s the most reliable option for cleaning the spaces that a toothbrush can’t reach.

Eat a Healthy Diet

Eating too much sugar or starch can increase your risk for gum disease, which is one of the leading causes of dental implant failure. Eating one piece of candy or the occasional potato chip won’t cause any serious issues, but you need to be careful not to overindulge in such foods. Instead, try adding more fruits, vegetables, dairy products, and protein to your diet to improve your overall oral health. Foods that are rich in vitamin C and calcium are particularly helpful for promoting dental implant longevity.

Break Bad Habits

There are several bad habits that could end up damaging your dental implants if you’re not careful, such as:

• Smoking or using any kind of tobacco products.
• Biting your fingernails.
• Chewing on pens or pencils.
• Using your teeth as tools (e.g., by tearing open packages).
• Crunching ice.

As long as you’re aware of these habits, you can take whatever steps are necessary to break them. One common trick is to replace a bad habit with a better one. For example, if you chew on your pen, switch to sugarless gum, which can help keep the area around your dental implants clean.

Protect Your Dental Implants

Do you play sports of any kind? If so, you should get a custom-made mouthguard as soon as possible. Even if the sport in question doesn’t involve a lot of contact, there is still a risk of getting hit in the mouth. A mouthguard will help protect your implants (and the rest of your smile) from any impact that could potentially cause serious damage. You may also consider getting a mouthguard if you grind your teeth at night.

Schedule Regular Dental Checkups  

When you visit your dentist for a regular dental examination, they can take a look at your implant posts to make sure that they’re still in good shape. If there are any minor issues that could eventually put your implants at risk, your dentist can identify and treat them early on.