How Do You Care for Your Oral Health After Getting Dental Implants?
Many people wonder how to take care of their dental implants after getting them. Bridges and dentures often require special ways of taking care of them. So what about dental implants? If you've been curious about this, here's a guide to caring for your implants.
After Their Installation
When you first get dental implants, you won't have a crown mounted on top. That is to say, the replacement tooth itself will be absent. This is because your body needs time to heal and time to fuse the implant into the jaw bone.
During this time, you'll have your gums stitched closed around the top peg of the implant, where the crown will eventually be attached. While you're in this phase, you need to be very gentle with your gums. If you remember what it was like after getting your wisdom teeth taken out, then you should enact a similar level of gentleness here. Floss and brush your other teeth the way that you normally would. When you get to the space that has the new implant, only lightly touch the surface of the gums and the implant itself with the toothbrush bristles. You should be barely coming into contact with them.
After Crown Mounting
After your jaw has healed and the bone has fused together with the implant, the crown will be mounted on top. By this time your gums will have healed, too. It'll be a lot easier to take care of your new dental implant after the dentist applies the crown. From this point forward, all you need to do is to treat your implant as though it's a real tooth. Floss around it, and brush over and around it, and use mouthwash. That's really all there is to it. It's part of the reason why so many patients like dental implants. After a while, you may even forget that you have an implant because taking care of them is so natural.
Getting dental implants is an easy enough process, too. All you need to do to get the ball rolling is to get in touch with a dentist and to have a sit-down appointment so the two of you can discuss your dental needs and desires. From there, getting dental implants is just a matter of setting up an appointment and going through with the procedure. Your dentist will be happy to answer any more questions that you have, too, so don't hesitate to ask.