When replacing a natural tooth after a tooth extraction, knowing your options is crucial! You can suffer a number of negative consequences if they decide against tooth replacement.
A missing tooth takes away from your smile’s important work of chewing. The absent tooth plays an important role in processing food, and forces may shift onto adjoining teeth. Those excess chewing forces have the potential to damage the remaining teeth in the vicinity.
Your appearance also suffers as a result of tooth loss. Not only is an empty space quite noticeable with a smile, the remaining teeth may shift to fill in the gap, throwing off the alignment of the rest of your smile. To avoid such outcomes, many patients do decide to get some sort of device to fill in the empty space after tooth extraction. Dr. Lindsey Saterfield can walk you through the process and answer any questions you may have!
Dental implants have become a particularly popular intervention for tooth loss. They essentially act like artificial tooth roots, giving the patient a choice of a more structurally complete replacement tooth. Not only does a dental implant provide a replacement tooth with a lifelike appearance, it also preserves much of the functionality that the biological tooth contributed in the smile.
Other alternatives include dental bridges and dentures. While these other options may serve is helping complete your tooth’s aesthetics, but may not offer the same level of functionality that dental implants can achieve. But even a dental bridge can limit shifting of the remaining teeth following a tooth extraction.
After undergoing a tooth extraction, you should seriously consider your options for replacement teeth and move forward with the chosen treatment as soon as possible. Here at The Dental Boutique, we are always available to answer your questions!
Until next time,
The Mint Mavens
