Six Things You Can Do To Maximize The Longevity Of Your Dental Implants

Dental implants are an investment that you'll want to last as long as possible. After you've gone through with the dental implant procedure, you need to do everything you can to maximize implant longevity so that you maintain good oral health.

The following are six things you can do after you have your dental implants put in place to maximize dental implant longevity.

Watch your diet immediately after implant surgery

While you can eat pretty much the same with implants as you can with natural teeth, you do need to be careful in the early days when your dental implants are first put in place.

You should try to eat mostly soft foods like yogurt and mashed potatoes until your mouth has some time to heal after dental implant surgery. You should avoid hard foods like chips, crackers, seeds, and popcorn. You should also avoid chewy foods like steak and caramels.

Once your mouth has healed after dental implant surgery, you can go back to eating whatever you like. 

Practice proper oral hygiene

Just like natural teeth, dental implants stay in better shape if you practice proper oral hygiene. This means brushing, flossing, and flushing your mouth with mouthwash on a daily basis.

Floss gently

While flossing is important to keeping implants in the best possible shape, it's important to avoid aggressive flossing. Aggressive flossing around dental implants can cause infection by leading to bone damage around the implant.

Floss slowly and carefully to extract food particles while also avoiding damage.

Be aware of the symptoms of complications

Some typical signs of dental implants that are failing or unhealthy include swelling in the gums, gum recession, biting problems, pain, and looseness in implants. If you notice any of these symptoms, you need to notify your dentist right away and go in for treatment.

Stop smoking

Smoking leaves patients more likely to develop one of the most common conditions that causes dental implant failure. This condition is known as periodontitis.

Smoking can cause susceptibility to periodontal disease because it detracts from the efficiency of circulation and also harms the immune system. It's important to stop smoking before you have dental implants put in place to avoid dental implant failure.

Make sure you continue to make scheduled dentist appointments

There may be some issues that come up that lead to dental implant failure that you can't detect yourself. This is why it's important to make dentist appointments. Your dentist can inspect your implants and make sure that there are no developing problems that need to be addressed. 

Reach out to an office like Oral Surgery Specialists of Austin for more information.