10. Benefits Of Treating Periodontal Disease And Tooth Loss

In past top­ics, the nature, pre­ven­tion and treat­ment of gin­givi­tis and peri­odon­tal dis­ease were dis­cussed. The over­all ben­e­fits or goals to pre­vent and treat these dis­eases is to keep one’s teeth in a state of com­fort, health and func­tion for hope­fully the life­time of a per­son, to pre­vent the unde­sir­able con­se­quences of lost teeth and to reduce the risks of asso­ci­ated other dis­eases or con­di­tions that can affect the gen­eral health of a per­son. Teeth may be lost due to peri­odon­tal dis­ease, caries, root frac­tures, cost, trauma and other rea­sons. Nowa­days in coun­tries such as Canada and Amer­i­can, peri­odon­tal dis­ease is the most com­mon cause of tooth loss.

In this topic,  the con­se­quences of tooth loss will be dis­cussed. Not all tooth loss is bad as there are a very few cases where tooth loss is good. A com­mon exam­ple of good tooth loss involves wis­dom teeth ( 3rd molars ). Most peo­ple do not have the space in their jaws to accom­mo­date the erup­tion of their wis­dom teeth in nor­mal posi­tions. Impacted or poorly posi­tioned wis­dom teeth should be removed at an early age to pre­vent future peri­odon­tal prob­lems around the 2nd molars and to reduce the risk of caries on the back side of the 2nd molars. There are other rea­sons to remove wis­dom teeth as well. Another com­mon exam­ple of good tooth loss involves cor­rec­tion of tooth crowd­ing by the removal of 1st pre­mo­lars prior to ortho­don­tic treat­ment that is done to straighten teeth.

Other than a very few exam­ples of good tooth loss, the major­ity of tooth loss is bad. Unde­sir­able long term con­se­quences of bad tooth loss with­out tooth replace­ment can include the fol­low­ing: 1) Loss of sup­port­ing jaw bone and gum height in the area 2) Over-eruption of oppos­ing teeth 3) Drift­ing and / or tip­ping of teeth adja­cent to the space cre­ated by the miss­ing tooth 4) Less func­tional sur­face for chew­ing 5) An unat­trac­tive smile 6) An older appear­ance in a cases of mul­ti­ple tooth loss result­ing in less sup­port for the mus­cles and skin near the mouth or 7) Any com­bi­na­tion of these unde­sir­able con­se­quences of tooth loss.

Obvi­ously it is best to avoid bad tooth loss. How­ever in cases where bad tooth loss hap­pens, it is best to avoid or min­i­mize the con­se­quences of this tooth loss by replace­ment of the lost teeth as soon as pos­si­ble. The replace­ment of lost teeth in cases of bad tooth loss results in the fol­low­ing ben­e­fit: A com­fort­able, func­tional den­ti­tion with an attrac­tive youth­ful smile. It also has the ben­e­fit of less long term cost and time spent at the den­tal office for recon­struc­tive purposes.

At this point in time, there are basi­cally 3 arti­fi­cial meth­ods to replace lost teeth: Remov­able par­tial or com­plete den­tures, fixed bridges or their vari­a­tions and implants with tooth replace­ments on the implants. Per­haps one day in the future, we will be able to plant tooth germs in the jaw­bone and grow nat­ural replace­ment teeth. Until now, nat­ural teeth have been supe­rior to any man made arti­fi­cial teeth.

In future top­ics, more details of the 3 arti­fi­cial meth­ods to replace miss­ing teeth and the asso­ci­ated links of untreated advanced peri­odon­tal dis­ease to other gen­eral health dis­eases or con­di­tions will be discussed.