I have a son who plays hockey. He’s managed to stay uninjured all these years. But, now that he’s in college, he received a direct hit from a puck. Now he’s lost a tooth. We had already got him a dental implant and are almost to the point of getting his dental crown when one of his teammates told him that a dental implant is a bad idea because if he gets hit there again, the damage will be a lot worse. Now I am not sure what to do. Do you have any advice? Should I have the implant removed?
Casey
Dear Casey,
I’ve thought about your question. First, do not have the dental implant removed. It is the best tooth replacement and that root form being there will come in very handy in the future.
What you don’t want to do it put on the dental crown yet. With that crown anchored on a dental implant, the implant would be ripped out of the bone by another direct hit. His teammate is correct that this will do some damage. Plus, to repair it would require an additional procedure of bone grafting.
I suggest, at least until he is done with hockey, to just get a temporary tooth replacement that is easily removable, like a dental flipper. This way if he is hit, then the the replacement will come out without doing any damage to him. If you want it to match really well, then you’ll want to go to an experienced cosmetic dentist. It will cost a bit more, but no one will know that his tooth is fake, which is important to a young man.
Because you’ve already placed the root form for his implant, you are not only saving time for when he’s ready for the permanent replacement, but you’re also saving yourself expense. The implant being placed there is preserving his bone in that area. If he didn’t have the root form of a tooth, then the bone would slowly shrink because your body would resorb the minerals in your jawbone to use them elsewhere. Then, when he was ready for the dental implant there would not be enough bone for the implant and he’d need the additional bone grafting procedure I mentioned earlier.
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