A dental implant replaces a missing tooth or teeth. The implant is made of titanium metal and acts as a substitute for the root of your natural tooth. Over 3 to 4 months, your jawbone fuses to the implant. The fusing process, called “osseointegration”, which is the reason implants are able to act like a natural tooth root or an anchor device for retention of mobile dentures.
Dental implants are composed of two stages - the placement of the implant by your surgeon and the placement of the tooth crown by your dentist.
Dental implants need to have bone surrounding the entire dental implant. After a dental extraction you can sometimes loose bone and have a defect or sometimes your maxillary sinus is too large that you do not have enough bone height for a dental implant. In these situations bone grafting would need to be performed. Bone grafting takes 3 to 5 months to heal and sometimes dental implants can be placed at the same time as the bone grafting.