Some combinations work great together. Peanut butter and jelly. Movies and popcorn. Batman and Robin. In restorative dentistry, one great combination is cone beam scanners and dental implants. OK, maybe that doesn’t roll off the tongue quite as smoothly as a song by Hall & Oates (kids, ask your parents if you don’t know who they are), but cone beam technology does make dental implants more effective. And dental implants are already really good on their own. Today, we will discuss what dental implants can do for you, and how we use cone beam technology at Sunrise Dental to improve that process. And remember, you can always make an appointment at any of our dentist offices in Raleigh, Cary, Chapel Hill, and Durham to learn more about implants or any of our other services.   Implants Make Teeth Replacements Better You don’t need dental implants to replace missing teeth. You can get a traditional bridge that is supported by your existing teeth. You can get dentures that rest entirely outside of your gums. But both of those options are missing something important. Neither of them includes a replacement for the roots of your missing teeth. That’s what dental implants are. They are prosthetic roots. As such, they provide a firm foundation to support a dental crown, a dental bridge, or a full set of dentures. With dental implants, you aren’t just filling empty space in your mouth. Instead, you are creating complete teeth replacements. This is illustrated in the two extremes when dental implants are used — single tooth replacements and complete arch replacements. If you don’t use a dental implant, you need to make a dental bridge to replace a single tooth. This means grinding down two teeth that may be perfectly healthy so they can support the bridge. With a dental implant, you can leave your healthy teeth alone. Instead, you can place the implant in your jaw and attach a dental crown. This restores the appearance of your smile and the usefulness of your tooth. If you are missing an entire arch of teeth, dentures can give you back your smile. Dentures even allow you to eat some foods again. If you place those dentures on a series of dental implants, however, you now have dentures that look and function nearly as well as natural teeth. You will be able to eat all the foods that you enjoy, and you can stay confident that your dentures will stay in place.   Cone Beam Improves Implant Placement Dental implants provide strength, security, and stability to your teeth replacements. But where those implants are placed can make a difference in how much stability and strength they provide. One thing that dentists have to take into consideration are the nerves in your jaw. A misplaced implant could be painful. You don’t want that, and we don’t want that, either. With X-rays, dentists can guess at where those nerves might be in your mouth. By using a cone beam scanner, we get much more detailed information. The cone beam scanner is a like a smaller CAT scan. We can use the cone beam to create a three-dimensional model of your jaw, so we know exactly where things are located. This gives our dentists more exact representation of where your nerves are, and we can identify the best places to embed your implants in your jaw. This imagining system goes beyond what we can see with X-rays alone. X-rays still have their place, and we will continue to use them. But our cone beam scanners are yet another example of how Sunrise Dental is putting technology to use for you, our patients.   Putting It All Together The real joy in what we do isn’t when we make the scan of your teeth or even when we place your implants. We get our real satisfaction from seeing our patients smile. When someone gets a dental crown or another patient gets implant-supported dentures, we love seeing the look on their faces when they see their new smile. We also love hearing how their replacement teeth have made allowed them to eat comfortably again.   Another Great Combination: Sunrise Dental And You The only way to benefit from the many services that we offer at Sunrise Dental is to make an appointment. We would be happy to help you and your family get the dental care that you need. That can include restorative dentistry like dental implants or it may mean preventive care with routine cleanings and examinations. To learn more about what we can do for you, schedule a consultation with one of our dentists at any of our four locations.