How Smoking Affects Your Dental Implants
If you’re missing one or two teeth, you can enhance your dental functions with dental implants. While dental implants are a permanent solution, smoking might slow down the treatment and recovery process. If you’re not sure how smoking might affect your dental implants, then you have come to the right place.
How Much Is Invisalign?
If your dental problem is not that bad, your dentist will use Invisalign to align them so that you have perfect-looking teeth. Would you like to know how much is Invisalign? They cost between $1,800 and $9500, depending on your location.
What Are the Risks of Smoking to Dental Implants?
The truth is, dental implants should serve as a permanent solution to all your missing teeth. However, unless you give up smoking, the implants might not stand the test of time. Thus, if you’re a smoker with dental implants, you should break the habit and change your lifestyle.
1. High Risk of Infection
It’s important to understand that your dental implants are surgically installed into your jaws. They’re placed through the games and then screwed into the jaw bone. That’s the only way to make them stay in place.
However, you can quickly get an infection after the surgery because of the incision. Note that this can happen because the wounds will not heal instantly, but after some time, by smoking, the population of bacteria inside your mouth increases.
If bacteria find their way to the implant site, they can easily cause an infection. You don’t want to struggle with an infection after the implants have been placed.
2. Slow Recovery
This point might seem trivial, but it does make sense. After dental surgery, the healing process will be slowed down if you continue smoking. Your doctor will tell you that the recovery process can last up to six months. This is when the jawbone has healed, and your implants can now function optimally.
Until then, you should stay away from smoking. The healing process can be medically defined as osseointegration. If you’re a smoker, you’ll need more time to recover, and even if you recover, your implants might still fail to function correctly.
The other reason smoking can stop healing is that it reduces the amount of oxygen in the blood. Also, while smoking, your cells will be exposed to harmful chemicals, such as nicotine and carbon monoxide. You don’t want these things to make you wait more than six months to heal completely.
3. Risk of Peri-implantitis
Smokers have higher chances of struggling with peri-implantitis. This is a condition that occurs when bacteria breed under the base of the implants. This mostly happens due to your tobacco or cigarette chemicals. When this happens, there will be inflammation and infection around the gums.
If you don’t take care of this problem soon enough, the bone around the affected area might deteriorate. This will stop the bone from forming a solid bond with the implants. You’ll realize that chewing becomes a problem. Note that peri-implantitis can even take place long after the healing process is over.
4. Dental Implant Failure
If you continue smoking after the dental implant surgery, you have a higher chance of experiencing dental implants failure. This problem will occur if there’s bone loss around the implants, so they become weak. The problem can lead to gum infection or per-implants.
Remember, implant failure can occur at any time, provided you have undergone surgery.
However, it mostly happens a few months after the treatment. If you have to smoke after the surgery, you need to be diligent with your oral hygiene to prevent dental implant failure.
Your doctor will share the details on how you can take care of your teeth during the recovery process. Unless you follow their advice and keep smoking, you should be ready for the worse.
Closing Thoughts
Once you have had the dental implants, the best you can do is quit smoking. But if you find it hard to put down the cigarette, it helps to take good care of your oral hygiene. Note that when the implants fail, there might not be any solution available for the problem, so it’s wise to control the habit of smoking.
