Patients can go for an Oral Implant if they do not want to have adjacent natural teeth to be shaved off, which is required in making a conventional Dental Bridge.For many patients due to loss of bone, Dentures do not fit properly and rock while eating, laughing or yawning. Here with a Dental Implant the Denture fits snugly on the implant. It works like Clip-In-Clip-Out.When the patients do not want to wear removable dentures, they can opt for a whole set of permanently fixed teeth supported by multiple implants. The artificial teeth need no extra care, just brushing twice a day like how natural teeth are being maintained, is enough.
A dental implant is an artificial tooth root replacement and is used in prosthetic dentistry to support restorations that resemble a tooth or group of teeth. There are several types of dental implants. The major classifications are divided into osseointegrated implant and the fibrointegrated implant.
Earlier implants, such as the subperiosteal implant and the blade implant were usually fibrointegrated. The most widely accepted and successful implant today is the osseointegrated implant, based on the discovery by Swedish Professor Per-Ingvar Brånemark that titanium can be successfully fused into bone when osteoblasts grow on and into the rough surface of the implanted titanium. This forms a structural and functional connection between the living bone and the implant. A variation on the implant procedure is the implant-supported bridge, or implant-supported dentures.
Composition of Implant
A typical implant consists of a titanium screw (resembling a tooth root) with a roughened or smooth surface. The majority of dental implants made out of commercially pure titanium, which is available in 4 grades depending upon the amount of carbon and iron contained. More recently grade 5 titanium has increased in use. Grade 5 titanium, Titanium 6AL-4V, (signifying the Titanium alloy containing 6% Aluminium and 4% Vanadium alloy) is believed to offer similar osseointegration levels as commercially pure titanium. Ti-6Al-4V alloy offers better tensile strength and fracture resistance. Today most implants are still made out of commercially pure titanium (grades 1 to 4) but some implant systems (Endopore and NanoTite) are fabricated out of the Ti-6Al-4V alloy Implant surfaces may be modified either by plasma spraying, anodizing, etching or sandblasting to increase the surface area and the integration potential of the implant.