If you have just received your dental implants or you are planning to get the treatment, you should be aware of the dangerous habits that may interfere with the success of your treatment. Here are a few examples of these habits.

Treating Your Teeth as Tools

Dental implants are tough, but they aren't indestructible and there are things that can damage them. For example, using your teeth as tools can damage the dental implants by weakening their anchorage and interfering with osseointegration. Here are some of the common ways in which people use their teeth as tools:

·         Opening cans and bottles with their mouth

·         Stripping electrical wires with their teeth

·         Bending wires with their teeth

Your teeth is not a bottle opener, a pair of pliers or even a nutcracker; in fact, don't chew on anything that isn't food (such as your fingernails) either.

Skipping Dental Checkups

Everyone needs regular dental checkups; it doesn't matter whether you have a dental implant or you have all your natural teeth. However, your need for regular dental checkups is even greater if you have dental implants. First, you have already lost at least one natural tooth, and you need to do everything possible to keep the remaining ones. Secondly, your dentist needs to keep an eye on your dental implants and intervene immediately they notice anything amiss. Therefore, skipping dental checkups is bad for your implants.

Poor Oral Care

Dental implants have high success rates; over 95% of dental implants succeed. You can see that the success rate is impressive, but it isn't perfect; a few implants still fail. Unfortunately, most of the implants that fail do so because gum disease develops around them. The gum disease affects the health of the tissues around the implant and delays the healing, prevents the healing or even weakens healed implants. One of the best ways of keeping gum disease is to floss and brush daily, which means you are doing your implants a disservice if you don't do them daily.

Smoking

Lastly, your smoking habits may also jeopardize the chances of success of your dental implants, and this happens in two main ways. First, smoking increases your risk of developing gum disease, which has already been established as a risk factor for implant failure. Secondly, smoking interferes with the health of the tissues around the implant by interfering with their blood supply. Lastly, smoking is also bad for your implants because it interferes with the quality and density of the bone around the implant site.

For more information, contact your local implant dentistry service.

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