Since dental implants first came on the market for dental patients over 30 years ago, implant dentists have been experimenting with them to find new ways to make this method of tooth restoration more versatile and therefore available to more people.

What makes dental implants so important is that their invention marked the first time in modern dentistry that there was a way to replace the root of the tooth as well as the crown.

This may not sound like a big deal, until, that is, you lose enough teeth to have to have dentures. That’s when you get the list of foods to avoid, and foods that need to be cut up because your dentures may stay stuck in them. Roots hold the teeth in place so that they can withstand the multidirectional forces created by biting and chewing. For the average male, these forces are about 97kg or 200lbs. That’s a lot of force. Dentures rely on suction to the gums for stability and therefore can only deliver about 25% of that force.

And that’s not the only thing that dental implants do that dentures and bridges can’t. They can also maintain a strong, healthy jawbone. Roots have another job, which is to transmit tremors created when the crowns meet in biting and chewing down into the jawbone. These tremors tell the surrounding bone cells that the jawbone is still in use, triggering cell renewal. If those signals cease, very quickly the jawbone actually starts to dissolve itself, thinking it’s no longer in use. From the outside, this appears as the chin seeming to get pointier and nearer to the nose, and a collapse inwards of the cheeks. Unless you’re into gurning, it’s not a good look.

At Farnham Road Dental Practice in Guildford, dental implants can replace more than one tooth at a time. That would cost a fortune. One implant can hold up to three teeth. A whole jaw of teeth can be inserted on between four and six implants. Another option is to get your dentures customised so they can be stabilised with mini implants.