If you are worried about your smile because you are missing teeth or your teeth aren't in great shape, then you should go see your dentist. They can tell you about the various solutions out there, including getting dental implants. Implant dentistry can be a really good option if you want to have a new smile and more confidence. If you are thinking about getting implants, you might want to know what the procedure consists of. 

Evaluation

The first step in the process is to have your teeth and jaw evaluated. Your dentist will take a look at your mouth and do some x-rays. They are going to look at various things on the x-rays, including whether or not you have enough bone in your jaws to anchor the implants. If you have lost a lot of teeth, you might have lost bone density, too. If you have lost bone, you are going to need to have a transplant to strengthen the bone and give the implant something to anchor to. 

Extractions

If you have to have any teeth extracted, this would be the time for it to happen. It needs to happen early in the process so that your mouth has time to heal from the trauma of the procedure. It can take around six to eight weeks for your mouth to be completely healed after the extractions, depending on how complicated the extractions were and how many you had to get. Everything needs to heal because the posts of the implants will go into the sockets where the roots of your teeth were, so if they are irritated, that will make the implantation hard and the healing time longer. 

Implantation

When everything is healed up from extractions and any bone grafts, it's time to implant the posts in your jaw. The posts are usually something like titanium. They act just like the roots of your teeth, so they need to be strong to deal with all the wear and tear that the implant is going to go through. Once your jaw has healed from the implantation, your dentist can put the replacement tooth or dentures on the implants. They will make sure that the teeth are tinted so that they will match your teeth so that no one can tell that you have implants. 

If you are worried about your smile, you may want to talk to your dentist about dental implants.