Maintaining and Cleaning Dental Implants
Gum conditions or trauma can cause natural teeth to fail sometimes leading to tooth loss. Increasingly, people are opting to have dental implants that can act as a solid foundation for crowns and bridges. This specialist procedure involves inserting a replacement tooth root made of titanium. Replacement teeth can then be screwed into the artificial root. Over time, the titanium root will fuse to the bone in your jaw making the implant as stable as your remaining natural teeth.
High Success Rate
When performed by experts, the dental implant procedure has an extremely high success rate. Our own success rate percentage is in the high 90s. One thing we always stress is that success is highly dependent on a committed twice-daily home hygiene routine and regular (every 3-6 months) maintenance checks with a hygienist and regular implant checks with you dentist.
Your Dental Toolbox
These items are essential for maintaining your oral health and ensuring that your implants have a long life. For a small investment, these teeth cleaning tools will greatly contribute to the longevity of your implants.
- Oral B Electric Toothbrush: To maximise the lifespan of your implants, it is important that you maintain good oral hygiene. Cleaning your implants won’t be that different from cleaning your regular teeth. You should be able to clean around each supporting implant by brushing. A regular toothbrush is okay, but we find that cleaning each of your implants (and your teeth) using an electric toothbrush twice a day to be the most effective way of ensuring the long life of your implants.
- TePe Interdental Brushes: We recommend TePe interdental brushes for maintaining good oral hygiene around your implants. The brushes are colour coded to indicate their size. Soon after you’ve had your implants, we’ll arrange a special appointment with one of our hygienists who will advise on your new routine, demonstrate how to use your new TePe brushes and make sure that you know which sizes to use between which teeth.
- Interspace Interdental Brushes: These small angled brushes with a pointed tuft are especially good for reaching just under the gum line of adjoining teeth. They are good at accessing tricky areas that your larger toothbrush will not be able to reach. We wouldn’t advise a direct investigation of an implant site with one of these, but they are ideal for very gently cleaning around the site.
- Dental Implant Floss: Special dental floss that is designed to be used around bridges and implants is available.
Naturally, some of the daily hygiene procedures may be a little more complex than you have been used to. You can expect to spend more time on your home hygiene routine than you may have done in the past, but it will be well worth a little extra effort to maintain optimum implant health.
Once we have performed the last of your dental implant treatment and you’ve made some appointments with our hygienist to advise you on the proper aftercare of your implants, we’ll hand you back to the care of your regular dentist. For the first few months, your dentist may ask to see you more frequently. However, once satisfied your treatment is performing as planned, ongoing care will be similar to any patient with natural teeth.
Average Life of an Implant
To maintain the restorative aspect of the crowns, some repair work may be necessary further down the line. Your dentist will keep an eye on this at your regular check-ups. Clinical studies that have tracked implant treatment record that 90% of implants placed ten years ago are still functional today. When properly looked after, the average life of your dental implants should be many years and possibly even a lifetime.
Download our PDF: ‘All You Need to Know about Dental Implants’.