Dental implantsin Beachwood, NJ

What being ten minutes away actually changes

Three things, concretely.

• Short appointments stop being a burden. A healing check takes a few minutes. For a patient driving in from Jackson we go out of our way to bundle those into longer visits. From Beachwood you can come in on the way to something else, which means we can check more often rather than less.
• A problem gets looked at the same day. A temporary crown that comes off on a Tuesday morning is a ten minute trip, not a decision about whether it can wait until Friday.
• There is no reason to delay the scan. The most common thing that turns a straightforward case into a complicated one is time. Bone narrows where a tooth is missing, and it narrows fastest in the first year.

The first week after implant surgery

This is the part nobody explains properly, so here it is in order.

Day one

Bite gently on the gauze for the first hour. Some oozing is normal and can continue on and off through the evening. Use an ice pack on the outside of the face in twenty minute stretches for the first day. Do not rinse, spit forcefully or use a straw, because all three can disturb the clot that the site needs. Eat cool, soft food once the numbness has worn off, and take whatever we have given you before the anesthetic fades rather than after.

Days two and three

Swelling usually peaks here, not on day one. That surprises people and it is normal. This is when a warm compress becomes more useful than ice. Start gentle salt water rinses if we have told you to, and keep brushing the rest of your mouth normally while staying off the surgical site.

Days four to seven

Swelling and discomfort should be clearly decreasing by now. If day five feels worse than day three, that is the signal to call. Most people are back to ordinary food, apart from anything hard, sharp or chewy on that side.

What is normal, and what is a phone call

Normal: swelling that peaks on day two or three, bruising on the cheek or under the jaw, a stiff jaw that eases over a week, a slightly metallic taste, and small fragments of bone graft material working their way out if you had a graft.

Call us, before you drive anywhere:

• Bleeding that does not slow after twenty minutes of firm pressure on fresh gauze
• Swelling still increasing after day three, especially with a fever
• Pain that suddenly gets worse around day four or five after having improved
• Numbness in the lip or chin that has not returned by the following day
• The implant or the temporary feeling loose

Most of these are sorted out on the phone in a few minutes. That is the point of calling first.

Living with a temporary tooth

Between the implant going in and the final crown, most people wear something temporary. It is worth knowing what that thing is and is not.

A temporary is made to look acceptable and to hold the space. It is not made to take full chewing force, and it is deliberately easier to remove than the final restoration, because we need to get in there again. So it will feel slightly different, and it can come off. That is not a failure and it does not mean the implant has failed.

If it comes off, keep it, do not try to glue it back with anything from a hardware store or a pharmacy kit, and call us. Household adhesives are difficult to remove and can damage the components underneath. Chew on the other side until we have seen you.

For a front tooth, tell us at the planning stage if you cannot be without a tooth for any period. That changes the sequence we choose, and it is much easier to plan for at the start than to solve halfway through.

What the final visit involves

Once the bone has integrated with the implant, usually three to four months later, the restorative phase is short. We take a scan or impression, the laboratory makes the crown, and it is fitted and adjusted at a following appointment. The fitting visit is mostly about the bite: getting the new tooth to meet its opposite number with the right amount of contact, which takes a few minutes of adjustment and is worth doing carefully.

After that it is a tooth you clean and we check. Our implant service page covers the treatment options; this page is about what the process feels like.

Beachwood, specifically

The borough covers under three square miles and holds about 11,300 people, which makes it one of the more compact places we serve. Anywhere in town is a short drive from anywhere else. The local reference points our patients use are Beachwood Boulevard, Pinewald Road, Atlantic City Boulevard and the waterfront at Beachwood Beach and Compass Avenue.

It is a town with a genuinely unusual origin: in 1914 the land was laid out as a summer colony by the publishers of the New-York Tribune, who sold twenty by one hundred foot lots for $19.60 with a six month newspaper subscription included. The first residents arrived in 1915 and the borough incorporated in 1917. A century on it is year-round, with a median age in the low forties and households averaging just under three people.

Beachwood borders Berkeley Township, Pine Beach and South Toms River. We see patients from all of them, and the drive is much the same.

Booking from Beachwood

Call (732) 608-6478 or book your complimentary 3D scan and consultation online.

Advanced Smile Dentistry, 2224 Route 37 East, Toms River, NJ 08753.