Most people understand that losing a permanent tooth is a significant dental issue, but many believe that replacing a tooth is a relatively easy fix. The truth is: losing a tooth does more than affect the way your smile looks. Lost teeth can have a far-reaching effect, including:
Diminishing Oral Function
You need your teeth to bite and chew. Depending on how many teeth are missing from your smile and where the gaps are located, patients with missing teeth will find that their ability to bite into or chew hard and crunchy foods is more difficult than it was before.
Bone Loss
Roots of teeth do more than keep them in place — they are lodged in bone and, during natural chewing motion, help to stimulate bone and allow it to remain dense. With all of your natural teeth in place, your smile looks and feels healthy. However, when teeth have been lost for extended periods of time, bone in your jaw goes un-stimulated and can begin to shrink. The result is a prematurely aged or sunken appearance.
Further Tooth Loss and Shifting Alignment
The loss of bone density can, unfortunately, cause other teeth to loosen in the long run. In addition, large gaps in your smile caused by missing teeth can mean that surrounding teeth begin to tilt toward the open spaces.
Choosing Dental Prosthetics
In order to maintain biting and chewing force, as well as appearance, missing teeth need to be replaced. While this can be done with dental bridges or implants, these restorative procedures come with an additional cost and need to be maintained with careful oral health regimens throughout the time they are a part of your smile.
Keep Your Own Teeth with Root Canal Therapy
It’s possible to prevent these issues by seeking immediate dental attention for a damaged or diseased teeth. With root canal therapy, the infected material is removed from the inner canals of teeth and the outer structure of your tooth is preserved, so it doesn’t need to be extracted. Root canals save your smile and your oral health from the big-picture drawbacks of tooth loss.
We help save patients’ smiles with root canal therapy in Lethbridge. If you have questions about root canals, please call our office for more information.