When people talk about getting dental implants, they focus on how dental implants affect the function of the mouth. And this is an important part of the discussion. When a person is missing teeth, they are unable to chew their food adequately, they are unable to speak adequately, and the loss of a tooth can eventually lead to the loss of the jawbone in the area where the tooth was extracted from. However, for most patients the functionality of their teeth is the last thing they are concerned about. Their primary concern is about the emotional impact losing their teeth and then having their teeth replaced by dental implants will have on them.
For an individual who is not missing any teeth, it can be difficult to understand how big a deal losing a tooth, especially one of the front eight teeth, can be to a person. It can be difficult to understand the negative impact losing a tooth has on a person’s emotions and on their psyche. However, it can be illustrated by considering the way a person feels when they find out that they have spent the entire day with a piece of food visibly stuck in their front teeth. When they realize that they have spent the entire day talking to people and smiling at people with something stuck in their teeth, they feel very embarrassed. Their embarrassment is only a fraction of what a person who is missing one of their front eight teeth feels every single day.
The Journal of Dental Implantology frequently discusses the options that are available for someone who is looking to get a tooth implant. Often, the financial cost of getting the implant is weighed against the emotional cost of not getting the implant. Really, a question that candidates for dental implants have to ask themselves is, how much is a confident smile worth? Individuals who use dentures will have to ask themselves how much is it worth it to them to be able to confidently go to bed at night without worrying about taking out there dentures or putting them back in?
Dental implants today are a lot more attractive, a lot safer, and a lot more permanent than what was available only a few decades ago. This is because dental implant procedures have gone from being something that was only available to the super rich to being something that the common man can afford. This has sparked advances in technology that have drastically improved the quality of the dental implants people receive.
