Why dental implants hurt?

Why would an implant hurt and what makes it a painful process? We at Hidden Valley Smiles think that’s probably one of the things most people think about when they’re contemplating replacing a missing tooth with an implant. Most people are not aware of the damage that’s caused when you don’t have a tooth where you used to have one. Obviously, there’s going to be some shifting, and then there’s going to have, so the tooth behind will shift forward, and the tooth above will shift down, so those are the two main things that happen when you are missing a tooth.

The other thing that might occur when you’re missing a tooth would be an imbalance. So, I relate it to a vehicle. If you had an 18-wheeler truck going down the highway, and I took away a couple of the wheels, it would still get down the highway just fine as long as they’re obviously not the front two that steer, but if I took them away, it would still be able to transfer the load. Now if you take that same vehicle and fast forward 10, 20 years without having that balance, there’s gonna be a lot of problems: abnormal wear, and damage to the structure of the vehicle, etc. Our mouth is no different, so if we’re missing teeth, there’s gonna be a real concern, a real issue with the balance and health of our existing teeth. So, there’s kind of the case for why you would want to replace a missing tooth. So they’re kind of holding off on maybe getting an implant because of fear, or you’re not fully understanding some of the consequences of missing a tooth.

We’ll also show how I can help you significantly here at HVS to avoid the pain commonly associated with an implant procedure. So to help explain that, when you typically are placing an implant, you would be placing it with a free-hand approach, where you’re visualizing the tissue. You’re going to place the implant with just vision and feel, and when you do that, you’re going to have to obviously be able to see what you’re placing your implant into. So the dentist, oral surgeon, periodontist, whoever’s placing that implant is going to make an incision on the ridge of your bone, and they’re gonna reflect back the tissue. When they reflect that tissue away from your bone, now that tissue obviously has to re-heal back to the bone.
That is why the post-op discomfort and pain from an implant might be so severe. It’s why you might want to have a procedure where you’re sedated, you’re put under, because it’s gonna be a long process, it’s gonna be more invasive, and then the recovery is more painful.

So Hidden Valley Smiles prides itself on using the latest technology and techniques to help avoid these things that are really keeping people from experiencing the benefit of modern-day dentistry. The 3D image that we can get with our machine at the office is allowing us to visualize the bone. And now that we can visualize the bone, there’s no need for that incision. No need for the incision means next to no bleeding during the procedure. We literally make a small, little tissue punch, something similar to a three-ring binder. It works perfectly at giving us access to place the implant. Since we already know what the bone looks like, we can use a guide to place that implant exactly where we want it with precision, and safety, it’s very quick, and it’s painless. And for most of our patients, that is what they will explain as their experience. After doing over 450 implants, I can tell you with certainty that our patients experience next to no discomfort, or post-op pain, because of this process of guided implant placement. So hopefully this was useful.

Implants can hurt, but they don’t have to be like that here at HVS.

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