FAQs

The most natural way to replace a missing tooth is to use a dental implant that truly becomes a part of you and helps to maintain shape to the face and jaw. An implant has an initial investment but over a lifetime has less maintenance and upkeep costs than bridges or dentures. At Hallcross, we discuss finance and payment plan options to enable you to spread the cost over affordable monthly instalments.

If you have no teeth or we have to remove teeth for you before placing implants we will always discuss with you the temporary options for having teeth in place whilst the implants heal and integrate. This is called temporisation.

As with all dental procedures we always ensure that you are completely numb before we commence treatment. Bone does not have as many blood and nerve supplies as soft tissues and therefore does not experience pain like other areas of the body. Most patients that have implants fitted say that the experience was not as bad as they expected.

Once an implant is placed it needs to have time to integrate into the bone and become part of you, this is called the healing period. We usually estimate this to be between 3 and 6 months. Our Implantologist will discuss with you how long healing will be for your case. After healing we then need to make the new teeth to go on the implant and this takes between 2 and 4 weeks.

If you have lost multiple teeth or have no teeth we can make the replacement teeth to whatever shape, style or colour that suits you. A lot of our patients don’t want straight white teeth and go for a more natural looking smile. All of this will be discussed with you during your consultation and treatment planning.

It is not the case that you need an implant to replace each missing tooth that you have. If you have a gap of 3 or 4 teeth it is possible to place two implants and then make a fixed bridge to fill the gap. Alternatively, if you have no teeth, we can make a fixed or partially removable denture on four implants to give a very stable and unmovable replacement for teeth. Sometimes it is possible to use 2 implants for a partially removable denture which replaces all the teeth in one arch.

Implants like natural teeth need to be looked after every day in order to keep the supporting structures healthy. We recommend that an implant patient sees our hygienist regularly and then annually has an implant check carried out which includes x-rays, measurements and cleaning. As with all dentistry there is a life span for restorative work, so the crown, bridge or implant retained denture will need replacing after a period of time, we can never say how long this will be but usually the restorations are good for 10 years or more.

Sometimes we need to add additional bone to an implant site and this comes as processed bone that has been harvested from animals (generally cows); this material has been sterilised and had all organic material removed. Using bovine bone (cow bone) as a graft material has become commonplace within dentistry today and has been a tried and proven technique for dental implants. The processed bone activates the human cells to integrate into the implant.

A very long time. The first implants were done in the early 1970’s and most of the patients still have their implants today, nearly 50 years on. Today’s implant success rates are around 95% and there is no reason for this not to continue. As research and technology progresses the newer implants are more successful and predictable than the initial ones. If an implant fails it is generally during the healing period, where for whatever reason it doesn’t integrate into the bone. This implant is covered by a guarantee from the implant company and in most cases we can re-site the implant.

With all implants, we need to check the bone measurements in the site of the implant. When teeth have been missing for a long time there can be less bone, but often we can use a bone graft to add additional bone. Generally there are very few cases where implants are not suitable at all.