At Katoomba Dental Centre, we always emphasise how important it is to save your natural teeth. This is why we stress preventive care and encourage our patients to visit our Katoomba, NSW dental surgery at least twice a year for routine check-ups and cleans.
Saving your natural teeth is optimal for several reasons:
- It’s safer to preserve your natural tooth. Extraction can put you at risk of infection.
- It’s less painful to keep your natural tooth. Even if you need a root canal to save your tooth, we can assure you that root canals are not painful. Because the area is fully numbed, the entire procedure is quite comfortable.
- It will cost you less money to save your natural teeth. Getting a tooth-saving root canal, for instance, is much less expensive than getting a dental implant.
- Keeping your natural teeth will keep your smile looking beautiful. Often people lose a tooth or two, and they don’t bother to replace it. This can cause the rest of the teeth in the mouth to shift, leading to a host of other issues.
When Saving Your Teeth Is No Longer an Option
All that said, however, for some people, there comes a time when saving their teeth is just not likely and extraction is the best course of action. In this situation, it’s important to examine all of the options available for tooth replacement and to pick the best one.
- Dental implants. Widely considered the best tooth-replacement option because dental implants so closely mimic the natural tooth, this is usually what we recommend to patients who lose one or more teeth. Unlike dentures, which can slip and shift while chewing or speaking, dental implants are permanently integrated into the jawbone for unmatched stability. Patients who opt for dental implants quickly find that they can chew their favourite foods, speak with self-confidence, and care for their dental implants just as they would their natural teeth.
- Dentures. Dentures have been around for a long time, and for many people, they have provided a reliable way to replace missing teeth—especially for those who are missing an entire arch. With implant-supported dentures, we can use dental implants to hold the dentures into place, providing a good combination of the stability of dental implants with the affordability of dentures.
- Bridges. When you are missing one or more teeth in a row, a dental bridge can be affixed to the adjacent teeth to fill in the space. A dental bridge will restore your ability to chew and speak properly, and it will prevent your remaining teeth from shifting to fill in an empty gap.
If you have enquiries regarding a troublesome tooth, we welcome your call to Katoomba Dental Centre. We can go over your options so you can make the best decision about your oral health.
