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What will happen without dental implant treatments?
Dental implants are an innovative way for patients to enhance their smile with teeth that look and feel completely natural, but compared to other dental treatments, they can be expensive. Some patients consider what would happen without dental implant treatments. The short answer is—nothing good.
When a patient loses a tooth or teeth, the bone that supported the tooth or teeth is gradually lost as well. As this bone disappears, problems with surrounding teeth as well as a weakening of support for dentures, partials and bridges will start to occur. The tongue will enlarge to accommodate spaces of missing teeth and patients may also start to experience pain, sore spots, decreased mobility, lack of retention for prosthetics, sharp, painful ridges, and mobile gum tissue.
With tooth loss, individuals experience a five-fold decrease in function, causing their diet to shift to softer foods. In addition, when bone is lost, the potential for experiencing numbness in the lower lip or even the possibility of fracture of the jaw rises significantly. The deteriorating bone will eventually spread and deteriorate around healthy teeth and ultimately cause the loss of those teeth as well.
This natural progression will affect the ability to provide the same dental treatments in the later stages of bone loss than if treatment had been started earlier on. It's much better to replace a tooth before all of the tooth loss side effects begin.
This is why many dental professionals recommend undergoing treatments such as dental implants as soon as possible—this allows patients the opportunity to experience long-lasting success and maintain good oral health. Patients may refrain due to the cost associated with treatment, but it is much more beneficial to undergo treatment now, because it will be much more expensive to restore your smile in the future.
By waiting, patients not only risk the possibility of not being able to undergo the same, simple type of treatment that would have been possible earlier, but they also risk experiencing a rapid deterioration of their oral health, which can lead to larger, more serious health problems in the future.