Just recently we’ve had an unusual number of patients coming in with serious problems with single front teeth. Perhaps it’s something in the Essex water!
Among the causes of these problems are
- sports injuries (eg getting kicked in the face playing rugby)
- ‘other’ injuries (eg falling down the stairs or sliding on the ice)
- old crowns that have failed and cracked the root
- problems with old crowns with posts
- problems with root-filled teeth
in these cases, extraction is often the only option.
In the past, we would have had to wait months after extracting the tooth before putting the implant in, and then a few more months of waiting before the implant could have a tooth added to it…..6-9 months of waiting with a temporary bridge in place…
With Immediate Implant techniques, we can often bypass this waiting time: if the bone is intact around the failing tooth and there is no infection present then we can (very) carefully extract the root (without damaging the socket walls) and put an implant directly into the tooth socket!
And if the implant is secure in the bone then we can even put the titanium post into place and put a temporary crown on top.
Where appropriate this treatment means that the patient can literally come to the clinic with a failed tooth and leave a short while later with their new implant tooth in place.
