Dental implants are artificial tooth roots to counteract partial of complete tooth loss. Their purpose is to support, planted into the jawbone directly, non-removable restorations that may compete with natural teeth in appearance and comfort levels even in cases when traditional approaches could treat tooth loss only with bridges, which require exsessive healthy dental tissue to be scraped away from adjacent healthy teeth, or removable dentures as a final resort. All this without having to sacrifice dental tissue needlessly or the discomfort of removable dentures.
The surgical procedure involved presents no more strain and comes with no more post-surgery pain than the extraction of teeth. Depending on the type of the implant used and the extent of the patient's tooth loss, the desired restoration is implemented either immediately or when the bone tissue has completely recovered from the trauma of anchoring the artificial tooth root.
Contrary to all superstitions concerning the likely rejection of implants by the organic tissue, responsible planning, quality implants, state-of-the-art surgical procedures and diagnostics can reliably prevent the loss of artificial tooth roots. Nothing could illustrate this better than the 99% success rate* of the implants we use as reported in surveys covering more than a decade of relevant treatment!
*Literatur: Zeitschrift für zahnärztliche Implantologie 4/2004, „Die Überlebenswahrscheinlichkeit von Implantaten...”, S. 230-246, Deutscher Ärzteverlag Köln, Knöfler et al