Unlock Your Beautiful, Functional Smile with Natural-looking Dental Implants
Are you missing one or more teeth because of injury, decay, or gum disease? Wilmington Smiles offers dental implants as a permanent solution to tooth loss. A dental implant acts as a tooth root and supports a crown, bridge, or denture to replace any number of missing teeth in the mouth.
Missing teeth in Wilmington, North Carolina? Schedule an appointment with Dr. Gregory Garrett for dental implants structured to look and function like natural teeth. With our dental implants, you’ll eat, smile, and talk like you never lost teeth!
The dental implant procedure
The dental implant treatment takes about 6-9 months, but it’s worth the wait because you’ll get something close to the real deal. Restoring your smile with a dental implant usually takes the steps below.
- Initial consultation: The first step is a consultation with an implant dentist to rule out decay, gum disease, and other problems that may compromise your implant. During this exam, we use dental X-rays to determine whether you’ve sufficient bone to support an implant.
- Pre-surgery procedures: While some patients go straight to implant surgery after the initial exam, others may require supplementary procedures to make them eligible for implants. For instance, if you have severe bone loss, we recommend a bone graft to replenish lost bone tissue. Furthermore, if you want to replace a failing tooth, it must be extracted first to give way to an implant.
- Implant surgery: Placing an implant only requires numbing the treatment area with local anesthetics, but sedation dentistry is available for added comfort. Once you are comfortable, the dentist surgically inserts a titanium post at a precise location in the bone before suturing the wound to kick-start healing.
- Healing and fusion: The implant site will be left for 4-6 months to allow the implant to fuse with the bone through osseointegration. After this integration, the implant and bone become one biological structure to form a stable foundation to support the replacement tooth (teeth).
- Abutment placement: After healing, the dentist places a metal appliance that connects the implant fixture to the crown or other restoration.
- Tooth restoration: The final step is to cover your implant with a natural-looking crown. Good news! Instead of waiting weeks to restore your implant with a crown, our office offers CEREC crowns to rebuild your smile in a single visit!
Top-rated Dental Implant Dentist Near Me
Dental implants offer life-changing benefits, including restored oral function, renewed confidence, and preserved oral health. To restore your smile with dental implants, call (910) 208-6721 to schedule an appointment with Wilmington Smiles.
