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Fortunately higher numbers of people are keeping more of their teeth into old age. However, for several reasons such as extensive decay, trauma or gum disease someone may have to have a tooth extracted. If this occurs there would be two main reasons to replace the missing tooth.
Firstly, you would want to maintain an ability to effectively chew your food. However, the loss of an individual tooth will rarely impact on this ability to a large extent. As adults we will have 32 teeth, 12 of which will be molar teeth. Research has shown that we can afford to loose up to 12 teeth – effectively all of our molar teeth – and not loose any ability to eat and chew a complete diet. However, to maintain this number it may be necessary to replace a tooth.
The next main reason to replace a missing tooth would be for cosmetic reasons as the importance of your smile can not be underestimated.
There are three main ways to replace a missing tooth :
- Dentures – these can be an effect method of replacing several missing teeth. However, most patients would like to avoid wearing a denture unless absolutely necessary.
- Implants – these can be wonderful at replacing a missing tooth. However, many patients may not be suitable, possibly due to medical reasons. One of the main barriers to having an implant is the cost.
- The other very effective way or replacing teeth is with dental crown and bridges. The benefits are they are highly cosmetic, cannot be removed and are usually more cost effective than implants.
To book and appointment or to find out more please contact us.
