DENTAL IMPLANT

During this first stage is when the titanium implants are attached to the bone. If the number of implants necessary is less than 10, you will have to stay in Bogotá for two weeks. If the number is higher, you will have to stay three weeks. The procedure is usually performed under local anesthesia, but when the number of implants is more than 5, intravenous sedation is used.

The first step is to prepare the places in which the implants will be attached. In some cases, it is necessary to remove a tooth or the remaining pieces of a tooth that cannot be fixed in order to attach the implant in the hole that the root of the tooth leaves behind when it is removed.

The hole is filled with a bone filler to fix the implant. If the tooth has been removed recently, the same bone filler is used for filling the hole where the implant will be attached. But if the tooth has been removed more than a year before, the hole would have probably filled by itself, and in that case, it will be necessary to make a hole to attach the implant. We should also add that it is not a good idea to let too much time go by before replacing a lost tooth, since the bone's volume tends to diminish as time goes by.

The last step of the first stage is to make a temporary denture; you will have to wear it until the definitive porcelain crowns are ready to be placed, in a second trip 4 months later. The odontologist will make a custom-made temporal denture according to your preferences and needs. There are three options: 1) a removable dental prosthesis of a flexible material, 2) one or more bridges with metal hooks or 3) acrylic crowns.

During this second trip, the porcelain crowns are made and attached to the implants. You will need to stay 3 weeks in order to complete the treatment. The natural teeth are whitened and the resulting shade will be taken as reference to create the shade of the porcelain crowns. Therefore, if the teeth lose their whiteness, both the natural teeth and the implants will be of the same shade.

If there are natural teeth that are broken or slanted but firmly in place, they may be used as anchors for attaching porcelain crowns that will be just like the ones attached to the titanium implants. Each damaged tooth undergoes root canal treatment and once the hole has been made, a fiberglass post is anchored.

The posts are made in a laboratory according to each patient's need. This process takes 3 days. Then the data is collected and sent to the laboratory to make the crowns. This process takes 8 days. Once the crowns are ready, they are tried on the patient's mouth to check that they fit and, if everything is right, they are cemented into place.

The crowns will be placed in such a way that all the teeth will look harmonious and even, but natural. A 'too perfect' row of teeth may look like 'piano keys'; however, a natural looking mouth is considered a beautiful and healthy feature of the face; the teeth do not need to be the center of attention.