Dental Implants Cambridge
A Lifelike Replacement for Missing Teeth
Dr. Meredith Todd and her team know that missing teeth can negatively affect your bite function and self-esteem. The goal of our Cambridge dental implant team is to restore your smile's beauty and functionality, giving you back the confidence you deserve. We offer a wide variety of dental implant solutions that you can trust to support long-lasting oral health. At Harbor Dental Center, you'll know from the moment you enter the doors that our team is dedicated to serving your needs with hospitality and expertise. We work hard to understand your current oral health completely and only recommend the solutions we believe will benefit you. Our team wants you to have a beautiful, complete smile you can be proud of. If you need dental implants in Cambridge, Trappe, Linkwood, or a surrounding community, you can count on us to have your best interests at heart. Contact us today and see how we can restore your smile!
Why Choose Harbor Dental Center for Dental Implants?
- Start-to-Finish Dental Implant Treatments
- Lifelike, Long-Lasting Replacement Teeth
- State-of-the-Art Dental Technology
What Are Dental Implants?
A dental implant post is an artificial tooth root made of titanium. Because titanium is the most biocompatible of all metals, the post will fuse naturally with the bone. This creates a long-lasting and strong foundation for your replacement teeth. After implant placement and sufficient healing time, we will fasten a natural-looking prosthetic tooth to restore the function of your bite. Our team works with you to create the best tooth replacement for you, ensuring that it matches the shape and color of neighboring teeth.
The 4-Step Dental Implant Process
Dental implants have a complex and multi-step treatment process that takes a few months. That being said, rest easy – the posts’ benefits make them worth the time and effort! Our practice does the whole treatment in-house to ensure you get the best results for your smile. With Dr. Todd at the helm, you can trust that you’ll be in skilled and experienced hands. The treatment itself involves four core steps: consultation, surgery, osseointegration, and delivery of the final restoration.
Initial Dental Implant Consultation
Before you get an implant surgery, you need to see Dr. Todd for a consultation. She’ll use that session to learn about your treatment goals, oral health history, and similar factors. Once she has those details, she’ll review them to see if dental implants suit you and adjust your final treatment.
If Dr. Todd decides you don’t qualify for dental implants, don’t worry. You can become a good candidate later through extra dental work – gum disease therapy, tooth extractions, etc. By receiving such services (which we could arrange), your mouth would be strong enough for implant posts.
Dental Implant Surgery
As mentioned earlier, we perform full dental implant treatments at our office. That means your surgery will benefit from Dr. Todd and her expertise. Since she'll oversee the placement work, you can trust you'll have excellent results!
The surgery itself will involve multiple actions. For starters, Dr. Todd will numb your treatment site so it won’t hurt during placement; it’ll only feel a slight pressure. She’ll then make an incision in your gum tissue that creates space for your future implant. Once the incision is made, she’ll place the implant before suturing your gums shut. She and our team will end the surgery by putting a protective cap over the post.
Dental Implant Osseointegration & Abutment
Following your surgery, your dental implant will slowly fuse with your jaw. This process is called “osseointegration” and takes about 4-6 months to wrap up. When it does, your implant post should be fully secure and a permanent part of your mouth.
You’ll attend a follow-up surgery soon after the implant fusion ends. At that session, we’ll place the abutment – a special metal connector – that secures your restoration. A dental lab will craft your final prosthetic while you heal from the second surgery.
Delivery of Dental Implant Restoration(s)
For the final step of your implant treatment, our team will deliver your implant’s final restoration. This device could range from a simple dental crown or bridge to a complex implant denture. Ultimately, which of these you get will depend on how many teeth are being replaced.
It shouldn’t take long for us to fit your final restoration. Overall, our dental team will just need to apply some dental cement to hold it in place. Add in a few last-minute changes to ensure good results, and you can leave our office with your newly-restored grin!
Benefits of Dental Implants
Dental implants have more perks and upsides than dentures or dental bridges. In fact, it's to the point that dentistry views them as the gold standard of tooth replacement. The metal posts are even popular enough for U.S. dentists to place 500,000 of them yearly. Given these points, our office will gladly share the specific benefits of dental implants in Cambridge. Simply keep reading to learn them in detail, or call us for a chat!
Day-to-Day Benefits
Often enough, dental implants’ day-to-day benefits are the most obvious ones. They are:
- A Full & Pretty Smile – Dental implants are capped with porcelain to match your other teeth in size, color, and shape. That means they’ll blend seamlessly with your smile.
- More Confidence – By restoring your smile, dental implants boost your confidence. You’ll then feel less anxious about your mouth in social settings.
- Better Eating – Since dental implants fuse with your jaw, they restore your bite’s strength after they’re placed. The result is that you can eat tough foods again!
- Low Maintenance – Patients can maintain their dental implants like natural teeth. As such, caring for them only requires twice-daily brushing and once-daily flossing.
Health Benefits
Of course, dental implants don’t just have everyday advantages. These metal posts also have a wide range of health-related benefits, including:
- A Cleaner Mouth – When smile gaps go untreated, they let harmful bacteria breed and put you at risk of tooth decay and gum disease. Dental implants fill those spaces to make your mouth healthier.
- Support for Teeth – Smile gaps tilt your remaining teeth when left unchecked, making tooth loss more likely. Dental implants prevent that outcome when they’re placed.
- A Stronger Jaw – Untreated tooth loss slowly erodes the jaw, resulting in facial collapse and similar issues. The good news is that dental implants stop (and reverse) such erosion.
- Good Nutrition – By restoring your bite, dental implants expand your range of meal choices. This wider field of food options ensures you get crucial vitamins and minerals.
Long-term Benefits
If you take proper care of them, dental implants also have great long-term benefits. Notable among these perks are:
- Almost-Certain Success – As long as it’s done by a qualified dentist, dental implant treatment almost always succeeds. The procedure even has an average ten-year success rate of 98%!
- Long-Lasting Results – When they’re well-placed, dental implants usually last for quite a long time. Even the average implant post usually has a lifespan of 15-20 years; a well-maintained one can work for more than 30 years!
- Cost-Effective Care – While dental implants cost more upfront than other options, they save you a lot of money in the long run. Their long lifespans (see above) keep them from needing costly repair or replacement work.
Who Dental Implants Can Help
After your dental implants have been surgically placed, your replacement teeth will be created based on the situation. Our team will then carefully and precisely attach them, taking the time to ensure proper fit, function, and comfort. We offer a variety of implant-supported restorations, including crowns, bridges, dentures, and All-on-4®. Whether you have one tooth missing or an entire arch, we have the solution you need to smile confidently.
Understanding the Cost of Dental Implants
The cost of dental implants can vary from case to case. At your initial consultation, we’ll put together an estimate of what you can expect to pay based on the specifics of your situation.
Our goal is to provide dental care that is high-quality and fits your budget. Along with accepting most insurance plans, we also offer LendingClub, CareCredit, and in-house financing options. You shouldn't have to delay dental care because of unforeseen financial burdens. Let us help you find the solution that is right for you.
Advanced Dental Implant Procedures
Sometimes additional procedures may be performed to prepare your smile for dental implants. For example, if we detect gum disease during your initial assessment, we may recommend scaling and root planing to help restore the health of your gums. By removing tartar from above and below your gumline and then smoothing the surface of your teeth to promote gum regeneration, our team helps create a healthy foundation for placing your implants. After successfully treating your gums, our Cambridge implant dentist will reassess your oral health and determine your eligibility.
Advanced Dental Implant Technology
Using specialized intraoral scanners, our experienced team can capture detailed and accurate digital impressions of your teeth and gums. These scans provide us with high-resolution images that we can use to create 3D models of your teeth, which we can then use to design and fabricate custom dental restorations.
Digital impressions offer many benefits for our dental implant patients. They are faster, more comfortable, and less messy than traditional impression materials, which can be especially important for patients who have a sensitive gag reflex. Additionally, digital impressions provide greater accuracy and precision, resulting in better-fitting restorations and improved oral health outcomes.
At our practice, we are committed to staying at the forefront of modern dentistry by investing in the latest technology and training our team in the most advanced techniques. We believe that digital impressions are just one of the many ways we can provide our patients with the best possible care and outcomes.