Advice to help our Woking patients maintain healthy and long lasting tooth replacements.
Dental implants are becoming widely known and more people are turning to them when they have lost teeth, rather than opting for more traditional dentures. There are many reasons for this; one being the strength and stability that implants offer, along with the fact that they can last for twenty years or more providing that they are looked after correctly.
This is an important aspect of dental implant placement. Although the procedure itself is a complex one that requires specific dental skills to carry out, much of the success is down to how the patient takes care of their implants, especially (but not exclusively) in the period shortly after the procedure.
In today’s Synergy Parkside dental practice blog, we are going to take a look at the various stages of teeth implant aftercare.
Initial aftercare
As you would expect after any invasive procedure such as this, there will be some soreness and discomfort in the area where the implant has been placed. This should be manageable through the use of your regular painkillers and should only last a short time. If you feel that any discomfort persists too long or becomes too severe, you should contact our Woking dentists as soon as possible for further advice. In the vast majority of cases, recovery is relatively straightforward, but care at this stage is very important, as it is for the duration of the osseointegration period where the implant and the bone in which it has been placed, fuse together.
Naturally, the implant is at its most vulnerable at this stage and care should be taken not to put any pressure on the new implant. This includes not touching it or poking it with your finger and not eating hard foods. In fact, for a short period, we advise liquid foods only, building up to softer, semi-solid foods such as mashed potato. Over time, you will be able to re-introduce harder foods back into your diet.
Cleaning is essential at this stage as well but you won’t be able to brush the implant with a toothbrush, and care should be taken not to ‘catch’ it when you are brushing the teeth around it. We will provide full cleaning instructions when you have your treatment, but generally, cleaning an implant means tipping, and not swilling aggressively, a warm saline solution over the area to prevent infection.
Especially at this stage, care should be taken not to do any physical activity that may have a ‘jarring’ effect. This includes activities such as jogging or jumping around, e.g. tennis or squash. It should go without saying that any contact sports should be avoided as well.
With Spring almost here and hopefully the final lockdown slowly coming to an end, it is fair to say that most of us are looking forward to a less restrictive lifestyle thanks to the successful vaccine rollout. It has been a tough year for many of us and we will want to make the most of our new freedoms, feeling as good about ourselves as we possibly can.
Although, as the experts say, we are not out of the woods yet, there is no doubt that things are looking brighter than they have been for some time.
Perhaps the most well known dental treatment is the filling. Most of us will probably have had at least one or two in our lifetime. Although it is a commonly used procedure, there are different types of fillings that can be used according to each individual situation.
Everybody has heard of root canal treatment, with many believing it as one of the most painful things imaginable. How truthful is this though? The fact is that millions of people have had this dental procedure and have survived to tell the tale, so surely it can’t be as bad as people make out, can it?
It’s a new year and most of us, including all of us at Synergy Parkside, will be hoping that it will be a far better one than the one that has just passed.
Few of us will be sorry to see the end of this year and will be hoping for a more positive 2021. There are still some challenges ahead for sure, whether that be Brexit or new variants of the C-19 virus. There is hope though, and the roll out of vaccines will hopefully start to speed up in the new year and allow us to start planning for a new start not too far into the year.
It is probably fair to say that when people think about common dental problems, they tend to think of tooth decay, and, for the more nervous amongst you perhaps, root canal treatment. If asked this question, few are likely to say gum disease; yet gum disease is a serious and common oral health issue that sometimes gets ignored.
Without a doubt, for many of us 2020 will have been the worst year in our memory. Much has been written about the Covid-19 pandemic and little of it has been positive. Some, tragically, have lost their lives and this will have affected those around them. For others, jobs may have been lost and our mental health may have been put under pressure like never before.
A week ago today, the country entered its second lockdown to help reduce the spread of the Covid-19 virus. We all hoped that it wouldn’t come to this but it became clear that something quite drastic needed to be done as numbers started to rise exponentially. This will be a worrying time for many businesses, despite financial help from the government. Whilst some business closures might be frustrating for their customers, the first lockdown showed that it could have even more serious consequences.