The Use Of Mini Dental Implants In Orthodontics

Since their discovery in the 1960’s, dental implants have verily revolutionized the science of dentistry. Every aspect of dentistry has been changed since the option of getting artificial tooth roots drilled safely and effectively into your jawbone has become accessible; from oral surgery to dentures and prostheses even on to cosmetic dentistry, and so on. Many ills of the past have become easy to treat, and you can enjoy chewing solid foods until your very last day with the help of well maintained dental implants.

It should be no surprise, then, that new practices in orthodontics also are arising from the use of dental implants. At first this may seem a little bit absurd, because, well, how do little screws in your jaw help with aligning teeth outside of the gum line? Also, aren’t braces on existing teeth?

Mini Implants

Mini dental implants are dental implants that have smaller diameters than regular dental implants (they are sometimes called SDIs, or small diameter implants), and thus do not tax the jaw as much as a regular dental implant. They are used for people with smaller teeth, or folks who do not have sufficient bone density to support a regular dental implant, but do not really need a bone graft, SDIs are also used to replace front teeth, as those have smaller roots than molars.

Anchorage

Anchorage is not just a town in Alaska, it is also a term frequently used in orthodontics. In orthodontics, it means the resistance to the natural movement of a tooth.

Mini dental implants can provide anchorage. This means that an orthodontic device that is wired and hooked up to a mini dental implant can provide resistance against the natural movement of a tooth, and can thus be used to align teeth. The mini dental implant can be used instead of headgear for example, to provide the necessary anchorage inside of the patients mouth, and have to rely on getting any external paraphernalia. This is useful, because it is less clumsy, less unsightly, and probably cheaper.

New Avenues Of Treatment

The use of mini dental implants in orthodontics also opens up new avenues of treatment, instead of just massively improving upon treatments already available. Certain teeth up until now would have had to be extracted, because there was no way to anchor them. But now, with the use of SDIs, there are ways in which the tooth can be rotated or pushed/pulled that may not have been available before.

So if you have been turned down by a dentist. ro told you need an extraction to go on with orthodontic work, ask a dentist if getting mini dental implants is a viable option for you.