Explain how a dental implant is done...? tom311?

i was in an accident a few years ago where i knocked in my two front, top teeth just a week after getting my braces off. luckily, they were just shoved back into the roof of my mouth and not completely knocked out. my teeth were pushed back into place and cemented onto the neighboring ones. shortly thereafter i got a root canal on one of the teeth (the other one ended up being fine). the tooth blackened, is now dead, and is very brittle. my dentist told me that the tooth can either stay intact for another 25 years, or it just might crack and fall out next week. a dental implant is my only option - apparently. because the root is damaged as well, it cannot be capped or crowned, and i dont want a bridge. i was just curious as to how the dental implant procedure takes and how it is done. ive always enjoyed going to the dentist, but this problem has gotten me a little shaken. any soothing words or suggestions??

Explain how a dental implant is done...? tom311?
I'm a dentist and my wife recently got 2 dental implants. My brother got 1 about 2 years ago. I wouldn't let them go through the procedure if it was horrendous or anything.





A dental implant is like one of those threaded inserts that you find in some assemble-it-yourself furniture. The implant is a cylinder that is placed in the bone where the root of the missing tooth used to be. It has threads on the inside to receive a post which will then receive a crown. It's actually kind of simple mechanically, except that it is _extremely_ precise and the technique is demanding. It's not difficult for you, but it may be tedious while the dentist checks and double-checks everything along the way. You want it to come out right, though, so this is what you want them to do.





Getting the implant actually placed may take 60 to 90 minutes for one and maybe 2 hours for two in the same area. After that, the restorative treatment will take a few visits of about half an hour to one hour each. By a few, I mean three visits in most cases.





Go look at this x-ray. The thing that does not look like a tooth is my brother's implant.





http://members.aol.com/swf08302/panvsfmx...