Patients with periodontitis or other forms of disease that can compromise oral health often ask a question. Is it better to try saving a tooth or is better a dental implant? Obviously, the answer varies from case to case and depends on recoverability of decay, severity of periodontitis or infection of tooth’s internal tissues requiring endodontic treatments or a root canal therapy.
Our advice is very clear: when it is possible, it is better to save the tooth.
The technology for dentures and dental crowns has reached excellent levels, both regarding dental aesthetics and functionality. Anyway, a prosthesis or an implant still cannot fully replace a natural tooth as the latter is organically connected to the mandibular bones to which its function is related. The “Dental system” is a complex organic mechanism of absolute precision. For this reason our practice is constantly striving to raise its qualitative standards towards conservative dentistry. In order to save our patients’ teeth in most of cases, avoiding the use dental implants as much as possible.
Saving a tooth, in addition, costs much less than its replacement with a dental implant. Suffice it to remember that saving the teeth from periodontitis has a cost 10 times lower than the average required for replacement with implants and crowns.
Conservative dentistry
In the following cases the question more frequently asked is whether or not to choose the conservative way.
Periodontitis
When the inflammation of the gingiva (gingivitis) caused by accumulation of tartar degenerates in periodontitis – most frequently due to a genetic predisposition – it would very often be sufficient to have some sessions of in depth curettages with a good periodontist. A professional and thorough cleaning of the teeth could, in many cases, save the teeth avoiding extraction and avoiding the need for a dental implant.
Caries
The tissues inside a tooth can die as a result of caries or a trauma. In these cases we proceed with root canal therapy. Sometimes the endodontic treatment fails to remove all the necrotic tissue and the infection can persist continuing to feed granulomas that manifest themselves as cysts. In the worst cases, those in which it is more difficult to intervene, it is often preferable to move in a conservative way doing an apicoectomy, as described in the blog Zerodonto.
Evolution in Dentistry
Dentistry evolves in two directions: on the one hand, the most advanced prosthetic materials and the most advanced techniques are studied to ensure an ever greater precision in the practice of guided implantology through the use of computers and microscopes. On the other hand the techniques of intervention aimed at preserving the natural teeth for longer and in a healthier state.
To read all the studies on conservative dentistry produced by the most renown specialists in Italy and abroad, we refer to the scientific blog Zerodonto.
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