Dental Implant Success Means Following These Steps To Avoid Infection

A dental implant is a good thing because it's a permanent fix to a missing tooth. An infection around your dental implant is a bad thing because at the very worst, the implant needs removal. With your own dental implant happening in a few short days, it is vital to learn how to avoid an infection and how to identify an infection, so you do not delay in dealing with it if it happens. The faster you deal with a dental implant infection, the better your chance of avoiding permanent gum damage.

How to avoid an infection

Once the implant has been placed into your jaw, the bone needs time to heal and grow around the implant rod. During this time, infection avoidance is important. There are several ways you can reduce your chance of infection happening:

  1. stop smoking before the surgery and use nicotine replacement patches to get you through the withdrawal period as smoking reduces the blood flow in your gums, and you need a good blood circulation to bring oxygen to your gum and help the bone heal
  2. be vigilant about brushing after every meal to make sure no bacteria remains in the mouth long enough to attack the surgery site
  3. reduce the amount of sugar-based foods and drinks you consume during the healing period, so you reduce the amount of food your mouth for the bacteria.

The more careful you are during the healing period after the implant surgery, the better your odds of avoiding an infection. However, you should know what the signs of an infection are, so you can get medical attention early when it occurs.

Signs of an implant infection

The most obvious indicator there is an infection around your implant is pain. But, pain is also part of the implant surgery recovery, so you cannot rely on this alone. If you experience pain plus one other symptom on this list, then you must make an urgent appointment with your dentist to get the surgery area examined. Other symptoms are:

  • swelling in the gum around the implant rod
  • bad smell coming from the implant site
  • yellow discharge oozing near the implant
  • uncontrolled regular bleeding

These symptoms can be treated with a prescribed antibiotic, but the longer you leave the infection to talk hold, the more tissue damage is done. Because the tissue around the implant needs to be healthy so the bone can grow and graft around it, early intervention by medicine will reduce the amount of damaged tissue.

Now you know how to spot and avoid an infection, you're all ready for your successful dental implant procedure.


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